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HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY - 
FROM CATHERINE TO GOGOL 


ARTHUR P. COLEMAN 


SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
FOR THE DEGREE OF Doctor OF PHILOSOPHY, IN THE 
_ Facutty oF Puitosopay, CotumBia UNIVERSITY 


HE i ee 
at he HE Foye 
: ean he 
A ry [3 
Le + 
B wo 1OOR 
OF i 
_ New York 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
. 1028" fal 


Sk ee See 
v 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY SLAVONIC STUDIES 


VoL, If 


HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 
FROM CATHERINE TO GOGOL 


COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
CoLuMBIA UNIVERSITY 


s,, New York 


SALES AGENTS 
HUMPHREY MILFORD 


AMEN CorRNER, E.C. 
LONDON 


EDWARD EVANS & SONS, Lr. 
30 NortH SzEcHUEN Roap 
SHANGHAI 


HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 
FROM CATHERINE TO GOGOL 


BY 
ARTHUR P. COLEMAN 


SUBMITTED IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS 
FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY, IN THE 
FACULTY OF PHILOSOPHY, COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY 


New York 
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 
Te 25 


Copyright, 1925 
By CoLuMBIA UNIVERSITY PRESS 


Printed from type. Published May, 1925 


LEE PLAMP TON SP RESS 
NORWOOD MASS:U:S:A 


JAN 2 °62 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 
I. INTRODUCTION 


II. WESTERN INFLUENCES . 


III. Humor THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF JOKES . 


IV. Humorous SITUATIONS 

V. Humorous DIALOGUE 
VI. Humorous TyPeEs 
VIT. ConcLUSION 
BIBLIOGRAPHY 


4 01802 


9 


Mee aes Vint 


in Gy Mtg 
ene UT Ae 
it 1 eb 


PREFATORY NOTE 


For help in gathering material for this study my thanks 
are due the staffs of the libraries of Yale University, of 
Columbia University, of the University of Prague, and of 
the New York Public Library. 

My sincere gratitude is also extended to my first teacher 
of Russian, Mr. Max S. Mandell of Yale University, and 
to Professor Clarence A. Manning of the Department of 
Slavonic Languages of Columbia University. 

Finally, I express my thanks to my wife for much aid 
and counsel. 


CHESHIRE, CONN. 
March 11, 1925. 


viz 


aa 
nt 


THE 
HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


CHAPTER I 
INTRODUCTION 


The object of this study is to explore with some degree 
of completeness the subject of Russian humor in the drama 
of that period which may be regarded as the formative one 
of Russian literature. Instead of employing western critical 
standards in the process of determining just which comedies 
are the most important, it seemed wiser to make use of the 
great body of intelligent Russian opinion. For, although 
to the Anglo-Saxon intellect The Miller, Sorcerer, Deceiver, 
and Matchmaker (1779), of Ablesimov may seem to be a 
clever piece of work, the fact that its success was only 
temporary proves that it was not a good exposition of 
the Russian comic spirit in its more permanent aspects. 
In like manner, even though to the American critic the 
Calumny (Yabeda) of Kapnist may seem to present the 
comic side of bribe-taking in a manner at least comparable 
to The Revizor of Gogol, its influence has been so slight 
that it cannot possibly be said to have interpreted Russian 
humor to any marked degree. It is merely a side current 
in the main stream of literary evolution. “ 

One of the most important of these side currents sought 
to bring about the improvement of Russian drama by a 
meticulous imitation of the French authors who followed 
the tradition of Moliére. In this movement the most con- 
spicuous position was held by Sumarokov (1718-1777), the 
veteran writer of comedies for and later a director of 
the first permanent Russian theatre. He borrowed from the 
French, notably from Destouches, his subjects and his types 
which he then tried to dress in Russian clothes. For ex- 
ample, in his comedy The Tutor, the main character is a 


2 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


hypocrite and a rogue taken over from the Tartuffe of 
Moliere. 

But amid all this servile imitation of France genuine 
efforts were occasionally made to introduce real Russian 
elements. Of such a nature were the attempts of Lukin 
(1737-1794). To this end he worked over a number of 
French comedies in the effort to ‘‘ incline them to Russian 
customs”. His best drama is The Spendthrift Set Right 
by Love, which deals with the adventures of a young man, 
Dobroserdov (Mr. Goodheart) in Moscow, where, getting 
in bad company, he was nearly ruined by his creditors and 
false friends. In the end he has a large legacy and marries 
the girl. Although in this play some genuine national ele- 
ments are introduced, Lukin, however, left no great name 
for himself on account of his small measure of talent. His 
efforts, though in the right direction, were of small signifi- 
cance. 

To this period belong also D. I. Kvastov (1757-1835) 
and N. P. Nikolev (1758-1815). The latter was ardently 
patriotic in his work. He wrote among other things The 
Egoistic Versifier. 

Although at an earlier date Sokolov and others had 
satirized the miscarriage of justice, Kapnist (1737-1824), 
in the afore-mentioned Calumny, was the most prominent 
representative of this school. 

Sentimentalism imported from the west in the latter part 
of the eighteenth century is represented by M. I. Verevkin 
(1732-1795); and by A. O. Ablesimov (1742-1793), whose 
best comedy was, as we have said, The Miller, Sorcerer, 
Deceiver, and Matchmaker. This same sentimental tend- 
ency was carried on by the now forgotten Prokudin, 
Ephimiev, Naryshkin, and Babichev. 

The reaction against sentimentalism, very weak at this 
time, was led by Yakov Knyazhnin (1742-1791). 

Later, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, the tend- 
ency was to satire and vaudeville in the light manner. In 
this direction A. A. Shakovsky (1777-1846) was a tireless 
worker. He had real talent for the comic and, more than 
that, he labored hard for the larger aims of the Russian 


INTRODUCTION 3 


theatre. To this same group belong: T. V. Postopchin 
(1763-1826), T. Kokoshkin, M. N. Zagoskin (1789-1852), 
and N. I. Khmelnitzky (1789-1845). 

But although the efforts of all these minor writers of 
comedy laid the foundation of and prepared the setting 
for the works of their more brilliant contemporaries, they 
are not of sufficient importance to claim the attention of a 
general study. 

Having then limited our consideration to the humor which 
has been produced by the foremost writers of comedy within 
the dates named in the title, and having discarded those 
efforts which the judgment of later Russians has declined to 
support, we are confronted with the work of three men, 
Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin* (1745-1792), Alexander Ser- 
gyeevich Griboyedow (1795-1829), and Nikolay Vasilye- 
vich Gogol (1809-1852). 

Although the comedies of the Empress Catherine (reigned 
1762-1796) do not deserve to be included in the category 
of immortals, either for their intrinsic merit or because they 
are read or acted extensively at the present time, they will 
be given some attention for another reason. Catherine’s 
guiding influence, felt in every sphere of life in the latter 
part of the eighteenth century, was of supreme importance 
in the field of letters as an inspiration to others. Although 
Catherine was by birth a German princess, yet through her 
more than anyone else passed those currents of western 
thought which were the glory of the Russia of that day. 
Catherine was in constant communication with Diderot, 
Voltaire, and many others of that group of teachers and 
writers who were just then busily engaged in making over 
the ideals of their time. The imperial court, then, was a 
clearing house for all the thousand different impressions 

1 Fonvizin’s name came from an old Livonian knightly family, a 
member of which was taken captive by the Russians in the reign of 
Ivan the Terrible. The name was originally spelled Von Vizin. Under 
the influence of the Russian it became Fon-Vizin by the time of Denis 
Ivanovich. After his death, about the middle of the nineteenth century, 
the family dropped the hyphen in an effort to make the name completely 


Russian in appearance. The result is the now universally accepted spelling 
of Fonvizin. 


4 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


from the west which Russia was trying to understand and 
assimilate. It was there that the foundations were laid on 
which was built the great literature of the nineteenth 
century. 

But it is not with these greater achievements of Catherine 
that we are concerned. It is rather with her more modest 
efforts in the form of comedy that we have to deal. In 
extent her labors in this line were considerable, for she 
wrote fourteen comedies, of which eleven are now extant. 
This is all the more remarkable when we reflect on the 
extent of her labors in foreign affairs. Although in general 
she took Peter the Great as her model, she could not help 
giving a feminine touch to the rather uncouth court that 
she found on her accession. Feeling that she must have 
some diversion from the fierce matters of state, she wrote 
comedies. Probably she had no consistent desire to reform 
humanity in a thoroughgoing manner by these clever satiri- 
cal comedies; nor did she plan to uncover the evils of 
her day to such an extent that a change of dynasty might 
be thought advisable! Her comedies, therefore, lacked that 
fearlessness and defiance of convention which are the 
ground-work of great, epoch-making creations. They have, 
at any rate, never attained to a high place in Russian litera- 
ture. It is a fact, moreover, that they became discredited 
in the eyes of their critics of the nineteenth century, more, 
possibly, because they were written by a ruler than because 
of their crudity and formlessness. For these critics were 
all of more or less pronounced liberal tendencies. Then too 
the whole trend of the literature of the next hundred years 
was toward a more searching analysis of character and 
motive than was possible in such simple pieces as the Em- 
press wrote. Perhaps Kotlyarevsky has best explained the 
attitude of Russian critical opinion when he states: “If 
we take in its entirety our whole comedy of the eighteenth 
century, we are surprised in spite of ourselves by its small 
artistic value. ... As harmless mirth seem, for example, 
the comedies of the Empress herself with their accusing 
frankness, of which her faithful subjects were so proud, 
agitated by all the tiny popular vices and lulled to sleep 


INTRODUCTION 5 


by all the large vices.” * Such a statement, though per- 
fectly true, does not alter the fact that from the point of 
view of humor Catherine has done some work which should 
have a place in any study of this portion of the Russian 
comedy. 

Since the comedies of Catherine are hardly known at all 
among English-speaking peoples it will be desirable, in order 
that many of the later observations may be intelligible, to 
give a short résumé of both her more important comedies: 
O Time and The Name-day of Madame Vorchalkina (Mrs. 
Grumbler). Both these comedies date approximately from 
the year 1772. 

As is apparent from the prefatory note, O Time, “a com- 
edy in three acts, composed in Yaroslav at the time of 
the plague in 1772,” requires seven actors and actresses 
and has its setting in Moscow in the house of Madam 
Khanzhakhina. It contains no rules for the costuming, nor 
extensive stage directions. There are no songs or dances. 
It observes the unities strictly. Prose is employed through- 
out. Because of its extreme shortness it offers a parallel to 
a modern one-act comedy. 

Madam Khanzhakhina (Mrs. Hypocrite), a hard, grasp- 
ing, old formalist, so busy with her prayers that she has 
no time to be human to her servants or civil to those who 
have business with her, has so much to say to her two old 
cronies that Nepustov finds it impossible to wring any 
definite answer from her in regard to the marriage of her 
granddaughter Khristina to Molokososov (Mr. Milksop). 
This young girl, not over-bright and with a boundless un- 
sophistication, decides after repeated prodding by her maid, 
that she might like to marry the afore-mentioned Molo- 
kososov. But Khanzhakhina, after a chat with those two old 
gossips, Madam Vyestnikova (Mrs. Talebearer) and Madam 
Chudikhina (Mrs. Marvel), refuses for the most petty 
reasons to give her consent. At this the clever maid sets 
her ingenuity to work. Knowing that Madam Vyestnikova 
has great influence with Madam Khanzhakhina, she ad- 
vises Molokososov to give her a valuable ring. After re- 

2 Kotlyarevsky, Gogol, p. 253. 


6 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


ceiving this gift, the old lady promises to help promote 
the match; the other neighbor, Madam Chudikhina, con- 
tinues to oppose. At this Mavra, the maid, tells the latter 
that thirty years ago a man had died on the very spot 
where she happened to be sitting. The poor soul dashes 
from the room in mortal terror. Madam Vyestnikova art- 
fully uses the opportunity to tell her that God has punished 
her in this manner for her opposition to the marriage. The 
consent of Madam Khanzhakhina is soon forthcoming. The 
last scene is a sermon by Mavra. 

The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, nearly twice as 
long as O Time, is not so well done. It employs thirteen 
characters and is divided into five acts. Just where the 
scene is laid is not stated. There are no suggestions con- 
cerning proper costuming of the actors, neither are there 

~ intercalated any songs or dances. French classical influence 
_-is apparent in the general structure of the play. ! 

At the beginning of the piece Olimpiada, the elder daugh- 
ter of Madam Vorchalkina, receives a warning from her 
maid that it is high time she set about looking for a husband. 
The girl demurs. A little later the sage of the play, Dremov 
(Mr. Slumber), asks the hand of the younger daughter, 
Khristina, for his nephew Talarikin. Madam Vorchalkina, 
however, insists on standing by what she calls the good old 
tradition of marrying the older daughter first. In the mean- 
time, two other suitors for the girls have hit upon an ex- 
pedient for hurrying up the mother. They cause it to be 
stated in the presence of the latter that the government 
will soon promulgate an edict to the effect that no mar- 
riages can be solemnized for a period of ten years. Becom- 
ing frantic at the prospect of being unable to marry off her 
daughters for such a long time, the mother tells her daughters 
that they must at once marry these two deceiving suitors. 
Khristina becomes ill and falls in a faint, for she really 
loves Talarikin. The maze of difficulties is finally unrav- 
elled. The older sister yields her right to a prior mar- 
riage and allows the younger to have Talarikin. The false 
suitors are driven from the house together with Firlyuf- 
yushkov, a giddy-headed dandy. The drama ends as all 


| 


INTRODUCTION 7 


good comedies should end, with a wedding. While the 
guests are celebrating in another part of the house Paras- 
kovya, the maid, moralizes in a way characteristic of 
the eighteenth century. 

Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin agreed with his empress that 
the main business of a comedy was to amuse and not to 
become too deeply involved in reform movements. Whether 
he did this from conviction as an upholder of the mon- 
archy would have one believe, or from necessity, as the 
champions of civil liberty have endeavored to prove, is 
a debatable question. At all events, he was careful to be 
not too caustic in his puns, for the government did not al- 
ways follow what it was fond of preaching in regard 
to free speech and press. Yet there was one line of progress 
in which he certainly took a great interest, the movement 
for the betterment of the educational system. Catherine 
herself was busily engaged in founding schools of all kinds, 
and in this work she was only continuing the work of her 
immediate predecessors, notably that of Peter the Great. 
At first the great mass of the Russian people were stub- 
bornly opposed * to the new education, weighed down as 
they were by a cultural inertia that stretched back half 
a millenium to the time when the budding culture of the 
Russians was prevented from fruition by the blighting in- 
cursions of the Tatar hordes. But as the eighteenth cen- 
tury passed along, more and more adherents to the new 
cause were gained, so that Catherine did not face quite 
so determined an opposition as had confronted Peter. The 
best minds were on her side; and among those gifted pro- 
moters of education who surrounded the empress, not the 
least important was Fonvizin. 

Fonvizin derives his chief claim to remembrance from 
two comedies, the first of which was written, according to 
the critics, sometime from 1764 to 1768.* This play, The 
Brigadier, is a comedy or five acts, some forty-five pages 
in length, employing only eight characters in all. The 

3 See Porfiriv, Istoriva Russkov Slovesnosti, vol. 2, p. 76. 


4 For a discussion of the evidence supporting the various dates, see 
Pokrovsky, Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin. 


8 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


scene is laid in the country. As would be supposed in a 
piece which goes back to French sources the three unities 
are quite carefully observed. Prose is employed through- 
out, for the author was not gifted in the art of poetry. There 
is only one small note in regard to the costumes of the 
actors, and this is placed at the very beginning. No songs 
or dances are included. There are no long soliloquies. 

Act I of The Brigadier opens with a prolonged scene 
in which the principal characters reveal their more strik- 
ing qualities. The brigadier himself is a typical old Russian 
soldier, rough, rather coarse with his wife, fond of boast- 
ing, and immensely proud of the fact that he is, as he thinks, 
Russian to the core. His wife is a hard, grasping old ma- 
terialist who, according to her son, would go through an 
attack of spotted fever for a ruble. The councillor affords 
an example of a corrupt official, for he straightway decided 
that it was time for him to go into retirement when an 
edict against extortion went forth from the central authority. 
Ivanushka, son of the brigadier, is a shallow youth of 
twenty-five who enjoyed a fashionable ennui when he was 
not imitating some French custom or other. Vapid franco- 
phile that he was, he delighted to make love to the coun- 
cillor’s wife, as he had seen it done during his short stay 
in Paris. The latter lady, being greatly flattered by his 
attentions, is chiefly of use in providing a companion for 
Ivanushka. Sofia, the unwilling fiancée of the latter, has 
a rather colorless lover, Dobrolyubov (Mr. Lovegood). At 
the end of the act this pair are plotting as to the best means 
of getting rid of Ivanushka and of themselves marrying. 

Acts II and III display two more or less mutually re- 
turned affections between the councillor and the wife of the 
brigadier and conversely between the brigadier and the 
wife of the councillor. It develops also that Dobrolyubov 
has had a sudden change of fortune which has left him in 
possession of the very substantial estate represented by 
two thousand serfs. This causes an entire change of front 
on the part of the councillor, who is now quite willing to 
have his daughter marry such a well-to-do young man. 

The fourth act adds practically nothing to the plot. 


- 


INTRODUCTION 9 


Clearly it is merely stuffing, although there are of course 
some jokes and an occasional clever remark. In the fifth 
act the action proceeds rapidly. Ivanushka is discovered 
in the act of declaring his love to the councillor’s wife in 
the most stilted French fashion. This gives Sofia an excuse 
for refusing to marry him. Thereupon Ivanushka begins 
to play his cards in dead earnest. First he reminds the 
councillor of that gentleman’s own lovemaking with his 
(Ivanushka’s) mother. Then after that old hypocrite has 
been forced to recant, it is publicly announced that the brig- 
adier also has been guilty of making advances to another 
man’s wife. Confronted by this just accusation the old 
soldier calls his carriage and orders his wife and son to 
leave the councillor’s house where he has suffered such 
disgrace. In the last scene the councillor and his wife give 
their consent to the union of Dobrolyubov and Sofia. Then 
the councillor, pretending at least to be repentant for his 
many sins, turns to the audience and says: 

They say that it is bad to live with one’s conscience, but I have 


myself just now learned that to live without one’s conscience is of 
all things the worst. 


In the second comedy of Fonvizin, usually translated 
into English as Te Minor, although a more accurate ren- 
dering would be The Unlicked Cub (the Russian is Nedo- 
rosl’), the idea in the backgroynd is the need of education 
in Russiz. It is slightly longer than The Brigadier. The 
scene is laid in the country, and some fifteen actors are re- 
quired to produce it. The plot is better organized and more 
unified throughout all of its five acts. Like The Brigadier 
it is written in prose in conformity with the rules of the 
classic French school. There are no songs or dances in- 
tercalated. Neither are there notes on the proper costum- 
ing of the actors. One important feature which gives an 
operatic touch to the piece is the fact that several characters 
sometimes answer at once, not all in the same words, as 
in a real operatic chorus, but all saying entirely different 
things. The result is usually not a clever dramatic effect 
but a confused babble. The action, rapid enough in spots, 
is interrupted by the long soliloquies of Starodum (Mr. 


Io THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


Old-thinker), the tedious moralizing of Pravdin (Mr. Just- 
one), or the ethereal sentimentality of the hero, Milon. 

Madam Prostakov (Mrs. Simpleton), an ignorant, grasp- 
ing woman, shares with her husband, who is afraid to say his 
life is his own, a wardship over an orphan named Sofia. This 
girl, who possesses a moderate inheritance out in the coun- 
try, an inheritance consisting chiefly of swine, is sought in 
marriage by Taras Skotinin, a country dullard and the 
brother of Madam Prostakov. Just as it looks as if he 
would be successful in his suit Sofia rushes in with a letter 
from her uncle who, so far from being dead, has made 1o,- 
ooo rubles in Siberia. At once the old lady decides that 
the girl is too good for her brother and that she would make 
a fine bride for her son, Mitrofan, a half-grown youngster 
with atrociously vulgar manners. Skotinin does not take 
kindly to the change, but continues to prosecute his suit 
with distressing uncouthness. Sofia’s uncle, Starodum, who 
represents the best of the old tradition of integrity, comes 
from Moscow to help his niece to escape from the clutches 
of Madam Prostakov. In the meantime an official of the 
government with authority to correct abuse of power in 
the empire, Pravdin by name, has been investigating the 
mismanagement of the estate. Quickly sizing up the situa- 
tion, Starodum betroths his niece to a young officer who 
possesses all the moral virtues imaginable, besides being 
the ardent choice of the girl herself. The vices of the 
Prostakovs become more and more apparent, especially 
during a very amusing examination of Mitrofan on the 
rudiments of knowledge. Later it develops that one of 
Mitrofan’s supposedly learned tutors had previously been 
a coachman of Starodum. Finally Pravdin confiscates the 
estate in the name of the government. Everything is taken 
from the Prostakovs. Even Mitrofan, for whom in her 
misguided way Madam Prostakov certainly has great affec- 
tion, decides to leave his mother and enter the civil or 
military service. With a pedantic flourish so common in 
the Russian literature of this period, Starodum, pointing to 
Madam Prostakov, proclaims to all: 


Here you behold the worthy deserts of unrighteousness. 


INTRODUCTION If 


The masterpiece of Alexander Sergyeevich Griboyedov,° 
Gore ot Uma in the Russian, is called in English either 
Intelligence Comes to Grief or The Misfortune of Being 
Clever. Unlike the work of Catherine and Fonvizin, his 
great comedy has been translated into English and is an in- 
teresting representation of the society of Moscow during 
the reign of Alexander I from a different angle than that 
in the War and Peace of Tolstoy.2 Completed about the 
year 1823, it was put upon the stage only in 1831 and 
printed in 1833, such was the number and force of the 
opponents who were stirred up by its fearless exposure of 
the truth. It is a powerful four-act comedy of manners. 
The scene is laid in Moscow in the house of Famusov about 
the year 1822. The play fills more than a hundred pages 
with a succession of cleverly rhymed verses of different 
varieties and requires twenty named actors besides a bevy 
of guests and servants. As has been pointed out it is 
written in conformity with the rules of the classical school, 
although some liberties are taken with the unities, especially 
those of place and of action. No songs nor dances are 
suggested. A plausible and interesting plot is made the 
ostensible reason for a studied delineation and evaluation 
of society. The action runs as follows: 

Sofia, the daughter of a prosperous official, Famusov, has 
been entertaining the latter’s secretary Molchalin (Mr. 
Silent) in her room the whole of the night. Finally at 
break of day Famusov endeavors to enter his daughter’s 
room to find out the true state of affairs but is prevented 
from doing so by the clever maneuvering of the maid Liza. 
Later in the same day an old lover of Sofia returns from 
a three-year trip abroad. Chatzky, for that is his name, 
has grown to be too deep for the shallow girl whose mind 
is nourished by French sentimental romances. He seems 
to her to be not a human being but a serpent. The act 
ends with the dramatic words of Famusov: 

What a commission it is, O Creator, to be the father of a grown-up 
daughter. 


5 For an excellent appreciation, see: A. S. Griboyedov, Gore ot Uma, 
red. E. A. Lyatzkago, Stockholm, 1920, pp. 3-64. 
6 See A. Kirpichnikov, Gore ot Uma i Voyna i Mir, pp. 341-383. 


TZ THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


In the second act Chatzky calls on Famusov and tells 
some of the faults of Moscow. This denunciation of the 
old order causes the official to work himself up to a white 
heat in condemnation of the younger generation. Chatzky 
on his side is equally warm, and the temperature is cooled 
only by the laughable misfortune of Molchalin, who has 
fallen from his horse amid cries and wails out of all pro- 
portion to the slightness of his injury. Sofia treats him 
with his scratched arm as if he were a mangled knight. In 
gratitude for her solicitude the “ knight,” as soon as her 
back is turned, proceeds to make love to the maid Liza. 
This prepares the way for another of those masterly cur- 
tains with which each act ends. In this case Liza is left on 
the stage, a forlorn figure, the puppet of fate, in a wilder- 
ness of conflicting emotions. 

In Act III Chatzky is again rebuffed by Sofia. With 
Molchalin he exchanges enlightening views on life, neither 
comprehending the other’s position. A whole pantomime of 
the society of Moscow is presented when the guests arrive 
for the evening ball. In a spirit of malice Sofia sets in mo- 
tion a fiction that Chatzky is mad. The act ends with 
Chatzky, against a background of card-tables and madly 
swirling dancers, delivering an eloquent plea for a Russia 
which should be true to its own soul. 

In the final act the guests leave. The shallowness of 
society is again revealed by one of its most ardent sup- 
porters, Repitilov. Chatzky, determined to find out the 
reason for Sofia’s coldness, conceals himself behind a 
column. Sofia herself walks stealthily above. Soon Mol- 
chalin, by an impassioned love speech to Liza, shows that 
his pretended affection for Sofia is only a piece of op- 
portunism. ‘This wretched declaration is overheard by 
Sofia, who of course is finally aroused from her sentimenta! 
dream. Chatzky too sees the tawdry vulgarity of the whole 
proceeding. Famusov, on the other hand, has only a single 
thought, the public disgrace of it all. At this Chatzky hav- 
ing delivered one final denunciation of the Moscow “ fou: 
hundred ” calls for his carriage in order to leave foreve: 
that whitened city. But after all this, does Famusov re 


— ee eee 


INTRODUCTION 13 


pent, as Catherine or Fonvizin would have had him do? 
No, absolutely no; his last words express an agonizing fear 
of what might be the opinion of the leader of his own 
social set. With this the great tragi-comedy comes to a 
close. 

To Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol” it was given to usher in a 
new and greater era in the field of the comedy, and, more 
than that, to bring in a range of subjects hitherto unknown. 
“With Gogol there was expressed an entirely different 
tradition, even another element of Russian national life, 
which up to that time had not obtained influence in our 
literature — the Little Russian element.” ® This new im- 
pulse was characterized by a certain colorfulness of treat- 
ment and brilliancy of imagination, the fruit of the more 
picturesque and colorful life of the villages of South Russia.° 
Gogol left to posterity, besides a variety of juvenile, and 
unfinished attempts, three complete comedies: The Gam- 
blers (Igrokht), The Marriage, and The Revisor (some- 
times translated The Inspector-General), all of them the 
product of the third decade of the nineteenth century. 

The Gamblers, never really a success, has for its central 
theme a narrative of how deception deceives the deceiver. 
Ikharev, the principal figure, is so fond of his pack of cards 
that he calls it by a feminine name, Adelaida Ivanovna. 
Because he has just won 80,000 rubles by cheating he thinks 
that deceiving people is a great art. His cards are so 
marked that he can tell any one of them by the backs 
fifteen feet away. Three professional sharpers, Krugel, 
Shvokhnev, and Utyeshitelny, pretend to be so astounded 
at his prowess that they invite him to join with them in 
bleeding a rich old fellow named Glov. The latter, having 
no time to play, leaves his son in the hands of the rogues 
with authority to draw on his father’s account. Ikharev 
and the other three crooks proceed to win from the boy to 
the extent of 200,000 rubles. To cover, the lad gives an 


‘For a biography of Gogol, see: N. V. Gogol, ego Zhizn i Sochineniya; 
V. I. Pokrovsky, Gogol (1829-1842), Nestor Kotlyarevsky. 

8 Pypin, Istoriya Russkoy Literatury, vol. IV, p. 483. 

® See Kropotkin, Ideals and Realities in Russian Literature, p. 68 . 


I4 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


I. O. U. payable later when the money comes: Ikharev 
buys this I. O. U. with his 80,000 rubles. Then he solilo- 
quizes on how much easier it is to earn by trickery than by 
toil. Says he: 

No, the mind is a great thing. In this world one must have dis- 
crimination. I look on life from an entirely different point of view. 
This living as the fool lives, that is not the trick; but to live with 
discrimination, with science, to deceive all and not to be deceived 
yourself —that is the problem of the present and the goal of the 
fiupure.3 


But the dénouement is swift. It develops that young 
Glov never had 200,000 rubles, that he was merely a decoy, 
and that the other three rogues had vanished with the 
80,000 rubles. Ikharev, in the act of taking Glov to court, 
is reminded of the fact that he as himself played a crooked 
game and has therefore forfeited his judicial right to 
satisfaction. Young Glov derisively calls to the frantic 
man: 


But you still have Adelaida Ivanovna.** 


The last scene, rather weak from the standpoint of art, 
reveals in the shape of Ikharev a completely disillusioned 
man. 

The Marriage relates the adventures of a middle-aged 
wooer. Although quite amusing it is little more than a 
farce. The central character, Podkolesin, is prodded on by 
his friend toward marriage with a widow. In the end, how- 
ever, he loses his nerve and escapes by jumping out of the 
window. ‘The plot is not strong, for Podkolesin, unlike 
Sganarelle in Moliére’s Le Mariage Forcé, had only a weak 
desire to get married in the first place. Throughout the 
play he is too feeble a personality to be really interesting. 
The climax is anything but vigorous. It seems to the 
writer, therefore, that those ’” who have found any deep 
significance in the piece have gone too far afield. It is 
more probable that the play was written for relaxation dur- 

10 Scene 23. 
11 Scene 25. 
12 For example, cf. Nestor Kotlyarevsky, Gogol, pp. 291-206. 


INTRODUCTION 15 


ing the time of the exacting toil expended on The Revizor. 
From the standpoint of humor it is, nevertheless, worth 
while. 

The Revizor will be outlined briefly later.* It deserves 
to be read entire by anyone who cares to read even one 
Russian drama.** It is a thoroughly amusing and illuminat- 
ing picture of a typical group of Russian bureaucrats, caught 
in the act of pursuing their nefarious trade. Because the 
play was so gripping and the picture so real, stormy conflicts 
soon after its appearance were surging through the literary 
world.*® Critics were divided into two bitterly hostile camps, 
each side vieing with the other in zeal. Bitter taunts were 
uttered which pained the sensitive introspective spirit of 
the author and changed the subsequent course of his life. 
But the passing of the years and the coming of changed 
conditions have swept all this away, and The Revizor is ac- 
cepted to-day to be as nearly true to life as any great satire 
can possibly be. 


13 See page 36. 

14 English translations: Gogol, The Inspector-General, tr., A. A. Sykes, 
W. Scott, London, 1892; Gogol, Revizor, a Comedy, tr., Max S. Mandell, 
Tuttle, Morehouse, and Taylor, New Haven, 1908 (a good edition for 
acting, considerably altered); Gogol, The Inspector-General, a Comedy 
in Five Acts, tr., Thomas Seltzer, A. A. Knopf, New York, 1916. 

15 See Sochineniya, N. V. Gogolya, St. Petersburg, Tip. Samoobra- 
zovaniye, vol. VI, p. 28. 


CHAPTER II 
WESTERN INFLUENCES 


Since there is such a dearth of information available in 
English, French, or German, a short discussion of western 
influences on the Russian comedy from Catherine to Gogol 
may help further to introduce the subject of humor. From 
many angles the literary period from 1760 to 1840 may be 
said to have been the final process in the creation of-a truly 
Russian literature. Accused with justice of being largely 
imitative it nevertheless completed the task of laying a firm 
foundation for that mighty train of artists who followed 
Pushkin. In the narrower field of the comedy the work was 
no less fundamental. The literature of western Europe, 
especially that of France, was combed for plots and ideas. 
It must indeed be constantly kept in mind that the minor 
authors of comedy imitated the west to an even greater 
degree than those who are given consideration here. The 
purpose of this chapter, then, is not to make an exhaustive 
study of this vast subject but merely to give a résumé of 
some of the work that has been done in this direction, since 
so little of it is written in a western language. In addition 
the writer will add some of his own observations, especially 
in regard to Moliére and Sheridan. 

The Russian theatre, from its founder Volkov and its 
early director Sumarokov (1756) to Catherine, adopted from 
the French its types and subjects which it tried to endow 
with the characteristics of Russian manners and customs. 
Hypocrites, pettifoggers, and chicaners, even definite per- 
sons * known to the public, were the objects of the satire in 
these early days. These productions, because they were such 

1 For example, in the comedy Tresotinius Sumarokov represented 
Tredyakovsky in the likeness of a ridiculous pedant occupying himself 
with trifles in orthography. Tredyakovsky (1703-1769) was a splendid 
student in school and a tireless worker but not at all original or gifted. 


He translated into Russian Rollin’s Ancient History in thirteen volumes 
and numerous other works. 


WESTERN INFLUENCES r7 


a mixture of the native and the foreign, were entirely devoid 
of unity and often gave a queer impression.”,» When we come 
to the comedies of Catherine we find that although they are 
the work of a non-Russian, they actually contain a larger 
portion of the native element than do those of Sumarokov. 
The country of her adoption interested her keenly and she 
constantly studied its manners and customs. It is a fact, 
furthermore, that her mastery of the Russian language was 
greater than is popularly supposed and her chief mistakes 
were merely grammatical errors. She was not, indeed, 
foreign to the inner spirit of the Russian speech, nor did she, 
as is often insinuated, write in French what her secretary 
afterwards translated into Russian.’ 

A further interesting fact is that Catherine was a western 
princess whose early reading had comprehended the best 
books of the most advanced nations. In this connection we 
may note that she made a free translation of the first seven 
scenes of Calderén’s El Escondido y la Tarada.* According 
to her usual custom she changed the names into some 
sort of Russian. Thus Don César becomes Sevin, Mosquito 
becomes Moisey, Otafhez appears as Otanov, Don Diego as 
Diegin, and Don Felix as Felov. 

Catherine was a close student of Shakespere. His drama- 
tization of a historical personage fascinated her, and this 
influence is felt especially in her two dramas, From the Life 
of Rurik and The Ancient Rule of Oleg, where, in defiance 
of the classical restrictions, she boldly calls each play “ an 
imitation of Shakespere, without the maintenance of the 
usual rules.” That she dared to say this in an age when 
pseudoclassicism reigned supreme is a tribute to the boldness 
of her character. That on top of this she actually did change 
the scene of action in every one of those ten acts, shows 
that she intended to outdo the great Shakespere at his own 
game. It is more than likely, of course, that she was en- 
couraged to take this step by the great revivals which were 
taking place in Germany subsequent to the Gdtz von Ber- 

2 V. Savodnik, Kratkiy kurs istorii russkoy slovesnosti, p. 368. 


3 Sochineniya Imperatritzy Ekateriny, I1, Vvedenskago, p. 5. 
4 Sochineniya Ekateriny, II, Red. Pypina, vol. III, p. 396 ff. 


18 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


lichingen of Goethe. In 1786 Catherine wrote an imitation 
of Shakespere entitled The Spendthrift (Rastochitel’). Be- 
sides these, she reworked The Merry Wives of Windsor and 
it appeared in the Russian as A Basket and a Washing. The 
combination of two such discordant elements as an English 
plot and a Russian framework ended in chaos. This attempt 
does show, however, the interest Catherine had in Shake-. 
spere,’ an interest which can be substantiated by internal 
evidence as well. For earlier and more original plays from 
her pen likewise display a regard for him. ‘Thus, the cynical 
and materialistic ideas of Spesov concerning marriage, the 
opinions of Hedkulov, and to a lesser degree those of Gremy- 
kin, in The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, are balanced 
by the speeches of Slender in The Merry Wives of Windsor, 
while Firlyufyushkov speaks a mixture of French and Rus- 
sian, just as Dr. Caius speaks a conglomeration of French 
and his mother tongue.® 

In this connection it must also be mentioned that in 1787, 
only a decade after its appearance in England, Catherine 
translated into Russian a fragment of Sheridan’s School for 
Scandal. This again proves the interest she had in the 
English drama. 

The impression must not be left, however, that Catherine 
was really much ahead of her time in her attitude to the 
principles of pseudoclassicism. She may have beenja daring 
spirit in some of her less important plays, but, as was in- 
dicated in the résumés of her two more effective comedies in 
the previous chapter,’ she followed, in her best efforts, the 
traditional French comedy as exemplified in Moliére. She 


© Veselovsky, Zapadnove Vliyaniye v Novoy Russkoy Literatury, p. 
04. 

° For the speeches of Herkulov and Spesov and Gremykin, see Cath- 
erine, The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, II, 2 and IV, 5. For 
Slender, see The Merry Wives of Windsor, I, 1. For an example of 
the jargon of Dr. Caius, see The Merry Wives of Windsor, I, 4. For 
further light on the subject of Shakespere and the Russian drama, see: 
Sergey Tilofeyev, Vliyaniye Shekspera na Russkuyu Dramu, Moscow, 
1887. For Catherine and Shakespere, see: V. Lebedev, Sheksper v Pere- 
dyelkakh Ekateriny, II, v R. Vyestnikye, 1878, no. 3. 

EOeE SDD, 45510. 17, 


WESTERN INFLUENCES 19 


did this not only in the choice of character types but also in 
the development of the subject. As an instance, take 
Moliere’s well-known sallies against doctors. It is a fact 
that he wrote several comedies, largely for the purpose of 
ridiculing the medical profession of his day.* In his case 
the weakness can be pardoned, for his delicate health and 
frail constitution did not respond to the prescriptions of the 
physicians. He therefore became embittered against them. 
Catherine, however, had no such excuse; yet Madam Vor- 
chalkina, supposed to be a pure Slavic type, comes out with 
this remark about doctors: 


And for what a surgeon and a doctor? ... I wouldn’t want the 
honorable surgeons and doctors to find out where I live: on making 
their acquaintance you don’t live as long as I hope to live.? 


The borrowings of Fonvizin are easier to trace than those 
of any other author of our group. Although his sources 
are numerous, they are confined almost entirely to the 
Danish author Holberg, and to the French authors from 
Moliére on. One would suppose that after such polemics *° 
as Fonvizin wrote against the French people themselves, he 
would have scorned to appropriate their ideas. That he 
was unable to see the irony of the situation constituted one 
of his most serious defects. How a man, furthermore, who 
claimed to believe in education could judge the great French- 
men of the eighteenth century by their petty weaknesses ** 
is a problem in mental aberration. For when we come to his 
own works we find in that famous geographical examination, 
that Mitrofan’s answer is contained almost word for word 
in a work of that much-despised Voltaire, Jeanot et Colin; 
while one of the most penetrating sallies in The Choice of a 
Tutor, also by Fonvizin, is taken from the meditations of La 
Beaumelle.** Both of these are among his latest works, 
written after 1778, the year of his first journey abroad and 

8 Cf. Brander Matthews, Moliére, p. 192. 

® The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, Act III, scene 7. 

10 Sochineniya D. I. Fonvizina, p. 351. 

11 Sochineniya D. I. Fonvizina, pp. 362, 363. 

12 Vesolovsky, Zapadnoye Vliyaniye v Novoy Russkoy Literatury, 
P. 97. 


20 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


consequently after he had written his scathing denunciations 
against France. 

Korion, an early play of Fonvizin dating from about 1764, 
shows this same imitative tendency. Although the title does 
not acknowledge the plagiarism, the whole piece is nothing 
more than a free translation from the Sidnez of Gresset, a 
Frenchman of a slightly earlier generation. Whereas Cath-. 
erine was wise enough to imitate Shakespere, Sheridan, and 
Calderon, Fonvizin made the unfortunate selection of 
Gresset, a man of small talent. And even then he wrote 
worse than his inspirer. Take the following as an example; 
the final lines of Dumont, the manservant: 


Malgré tout le jargon de la philosophie, malgré tous les chagrins, 
ma foi, vive le vie! 15 


are made considerably less forceful in those words of Andrey, 
the manservant: 


No matter how much we may chance to grieve, yet we wish to live 
as long as possible.1# 


Or that passage of conversation between Sganarelle and 
Pancrace where the latter, after asking Sganarelle whether 
he wished to speak in some ten foreign languages, says in re- 
gard to his native tongue: 


Passez donc de l’autre cété; car cette oreille-ci est destinée pour 
les langues scientifiques et étrangéres, et l’autre est pour la mater- 
nelie+* 


How much finer feeling for the comic it displays than the 
closely related passage from Fonvizin which begins: 


BRIGADIRSHA (mother of Ivanushka). Our business is to find a 
bride for you and it is yours to marry her. Already you are trying 
to get out of doing your duty. 

THE Son. How’s this, ma mére, am I to marry, and isn’t there 
any need for me to have anything to do with the choice of the bride? 

BricaDirSHA. Indeed. And how did your father get married? 
And how did I marry him? We never heard about each other even 


13 Sidnei, last scene. 
14 Fonvizin, Korion, III, 5. 
15 Moliére, Le Mariage Forcé, scene 4. 


WESTERN INFLUENCES 21 


by report. Never in all my life before the wedding did I speak with 
him, and something like two weeks after the wedding I just began to 
speak with him in a very gradual manner. 

THE Son. Probably that’s why you have had so much to say to 
each other ever since.1¢ 


But the author who had the greatest influence on this same 
comedy, The Brigadier, was not a Frenchman, but a Dane, 
Ludwig Holberg, often called the Danish Moliére, or the 
father of modern Danish literature. The tales of this 
writer had been translated in 1761 by Fonvizin in his uni- 
versity days, while to go farther back, it had been a play 
of Holberg which he saw on the Petersburg stage in 1758, 
Henry and Pernilla by name, which in all probability had 
helped him to choose his vocation. 

The Brigadier of Fonvizin certainly owes much to the 
Jean de France of Holberg. Because of its extreme inac- 
cessibility in America I quote from Veselovsky’s erudite 
study of the subject: 


In the piece of Holberg appear in exactly the same manner two 
old men who have decided among themselves to marry off their 
children; the daughter of one of them is horrified at the prospect 
of marrying a giddy fellow who has been in Paris; she herself loves 
a young man toward whom, up to that time, her father has been 
very cool (this pale young fellow, corresponding to Dobrolyubov in 
the Russian piece, has a name very similar to his in the German 
Liebhold). 


At great length Veselovsky analyzes the details of the 
likeness, comparing Ivanushka to the lover in the play of 
Holberg, etc. ... In general, he says, however: 


We admit that with Fonvizin there are many leanings away from 
the prototype, many original and clever remarks and especially a 
remarkable closeness to actual Russian life (in the stories of the 
brigadier and his wife about military life and of the councillor’s wife 
about judicial service). The Russian play is much more bold, but 
for this reason falls all the more sharply into caricaturization.*? 


The influence of western literature on Griboyedov is at 
once more subtle and less obvious than in the case of 


16 Fonvizin, The Brigadier, V, 1. 
17 Veselovsky, op. cit., pp. 97, 98. 


22 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


Catherine or Fonvizin. One cannot say with the same 
security that he was influenced by a certain book, because 
like Shakespere himself he never slavishly imitated. Under- 
standing rather clearly the real meaning of the west he al- 
ways elaborated and embellished a borrowed idea until it 
was really his own. A close student of Shakespere, he 
learned from the master how to put a world of mean-. 
ing behind a few simple phrases. And it is this fundamental 
method of treatment whereby he was able in one short play 
to describe Moscow society in the epoch of Alexander I 
with a fidelity, in spirit at least, as great as Tolstoy in War 
and Peace was able to do in four volumes. It is this all-em- 
bracing method of treatment rather than scattered expres- 
sions and ideas that are the fruit of his study of the greatest 
English playwright. 

From Sheridan Griboyedov gathered hints on the suc- 
cessful handling of the social comedy. The thinly veiled 
satire in the mind of the writer of the dialogue between 
Famusov and Liza in which the former expresses his 
opinions on the uselessness of novel reading is closely akin 
to that of the author of the dialogue between Lydia and 
her maid in The Rivals.‘* We must concede, however, that 
Griboyedov, living in an age when sentimentalism was on 
the wane, treated Sofia with much less earnestness than 
Sheridan treated Julia, for example. Sofia is to be pitied 
for her simplicity, but such is the atmosphere of The Rivals 
that Julia can speak to her lover in these words with perfect 
naturalness: 

Then on the bosom of your wedded Julia, you may lull your keen 
regret to slumbering; while virtuous love, with a cherub’s hand, 


shall smooth the brow of upbraiding thought and pluck the thorns 
from compunction.?9 


To Die Abderiten of Wieland Griboyedov may be in- 
debted for the theme of the young man who returns to 
his native land after years of absence abroad, three in the 
case of Chatzky, and twenty in that of Demokritos. In 
both of the places described, in Abdera as well as in 


18 See The Misfortune of Being Clever, I, 4, and The Rivals, I, 2. 
19 The: Rivals, (Vx, 


WESTERN INFLUENCES 23 


Moscow, people are anxious to have their own pet illusions 
justified, instead of learning the truth.*° It is the old story 
of the effect of a deadening ‘‘ Main Street”? on a young 
man of vision. Again, the cheap and tawdry interest which 
the citizens of Abdera showed in art and music may well 
be compared with Chatzky’s opinion of the vaporous fu- 
tility of the high society of Moscow.”* It is also interest- 
ing to note that just as The Misfortune of Being Clever 
teems with French words so does Die Abderiten.*° 

Certainly some of the more revolutionary elements in 
The Misfortune of Being Clever owe something to the 
French dramatists who presaged the Revolution. But 
of all the French dramatists who influenced him in 
any way, it was Moliére more than any other who 
served as his inspiration. The simplicity of Sofia 
in The Misfortune of Being Clever, although hardly so 
delicate, has a point of contact with the innocence of Agnes 
in Moliére’s L’école des Femmes. The restrained humor 
of the rhymed verses suggests such influence. The re- 
semblance, however, is greatest between Alceste, the hero 
of Le Misanthrope and Chatzky, whose last words are re- 
spectively: 

Trahi de toutes parts, accablé d’injustices, 
Je vais sortir d’un gouffre ot triomphent les vices, 


Et chercher sur la terre un endroit écarté 
Ou d’étre homme d’honneur on ait la liberté. 


And in really untranslatable Russian: 


Away from Moscow! Never shall I return. I flee, unheeding I 
go to search over the world for a place 
Where there is a corner for outraged feelings! 
My carriage, bring me my carriage! 


This similarity between the last words of the two char- 
acters is indicative of the relation which exists between 


20 See Wieland, Die Abderiten, p. go. 

21 See Die Abderiten, p. 26, and The Misfortune of Being Clever, 
1p 8 

22 For example, on p. 99, Wieland uses the word attitude, and again 
on p. 215. In the former case he feels bound to plead jocularly: ‘“ Ein 
Fremdes Wort! Ich bitte es den Puristen ab.” 


24 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


their more complete developments throughout the two plays. 
We quote from a recent article on the subject: 


Le misanthrope et le malheur de Vesprit ont méme fond: un tableau 
satirique de la société mondaine; méme sujet le conflit entre des ames 
éprises de sincérité; de probité, et les vices du temps; méme 
élément psychologique: un amour malheureux. L’observation de la 
régle des unités, l'emploi du vers, l’alternance des tableaux de moeurs 
et débats d’idées ou de passion, qui jalonnent les trois ou quatre - 
épisodes d’une crise sentimentale maintes rencontrés de deétail, la 
forme presque identique de dénouement et de l’adieu jeté a un monde 
pervers évoquent a chaque instant le modeéle frangais.?* 


To hunt out the western sources of influence on Gogol 
is a still more elusive undertaking, for although he spent 
many of the later years of his life in western Europe, he 
took relatively little interest in the active life about him. 
Furthermore, his comedies, written in the period before he 
went abroad, betray more of Little Russian wit than of 
sympathy with the methods of Shakespere, or of Moliere. 
He could not, however, entirely escape the influence of the 
west which was so keenly felt throughout the literary circles 
of which he desired to be a member. Although he did 
not himself know much of foreign languages, yet he could 
not fail to absorb, through translations and the conversa- 
tion of friends, something of the western spirit. It is said 
to have been Pushkin who urged him to break away from 
the shallow little sallies of country wit and to consider the 
deathless message of Cervantes who, because of his knowl- 
edge of humanity, lived long after the exciting cause of 
his great satire was forgotten. Quite possibly too it was a 
desire to follow Shakespere which induced Gogol to take 
a theme from early English history for his uncompleted 
play Alfred. According to Veselovsky ** this effort was 
based on Hallam’s work.’ 

The Gamblers of Gogol is an adaptation of a theme com- 
mon enough in western European literature, that of the wiles 
of a card-sharper. LEspecially in Spain, even before the 
days of Cervantes, many tales were written about the 


23 J. Patouillet, in Revue des Etudes Slaves, Tome 2, p. 288. 
24 Veselovsky, op. cit., p. 214. 


~ 


WESTERN INFLUENCES 25 


clever tricks of this particular kind of roguery. In Gogol’s 
play this same thread was elaborated into a finished story. 
One of the main attractions of this play to the western 
reader, therefore, is the watching of the way in which 
a Russian handles a theme already familiar to the west. 

The Marriage, to an even less degree than The Gamblers, 
can be said to have an original plot. Many farces and 
light comedies had been written about an aging bachelor 
who suddenly undertakes to get married. Here again, the 
chief interest for a westerner is the handling of an old theme 
by an artist of Slavic temperament. 

Over and above all this, Gogol’s fame as a writer of 
comedy must rest not on these mediocre productions, what- 
ever their sources, but solely on The Revizor. In fact, 
this play together with The Misfortune of Being Clever 
are the only comedies from this whole period which are 
worthy to be compared with the best work of Shakespere, 
Moliére, Lope de Vega, or even with Lessing’s Minna von 
Barnhelm. 

Khlestakov in The Revizor is to be compared with Mas- 
carille in Moliere’s Les Précieuses. In a similar manner 
does Khlestakov, an underling, pretend to be a man of 
importance and high literary attainments.*’ Also, as 
Merimée long ago pointed out, the scene in the last act of 
The Revizor where the letter of Khlestakov is read with- 
out his knowledge or permission is similar to the same 
episode in the last scene of Le Misanthrope.” ‘Thus the 
dénouement of both plays may be said to have been 
brought about by the same artifice. 

Just as after the production of so daring a piece as 
L’école des Femmes, Moliere felt it necessary to write some 
sort of apology to counteract fierce criticism, so did Gogol 
write his Theatrical Dénouement (Teatralnaya Razvyazka) 
to vindicate his position. Moliére’s defense is based on 
common sense. He shows that L’école des Femmes is im- 
moral and shocking only to artificial standards. He admits 
that the question is really so complex that it cannot be 


25 The Revizor, Ill, 6, and Les Précieuses Ridicules, scene 9. 
26 Veselovsky, op. cit., p. 214. 


a 


26 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


settled with finality. Gogol, on the other hand, tortured 
in spirit because of the fierce criticism which his Revizor 
had aroused, displays a method of answering his critics that 
is thoroughly earnest. In The Theatrical Dénouement he 
satirizes the way in which people go to the theatre to see 
others ridiculed, not honestly to examine their own short- 
comings. He shows that satire really has a place in life. 
in exposing men’s faults to themselves. At the end it is 
revealed that Khlestakov represents the worldly deceived 
conscience which believes that it is actually gaining by its 
career of falsehood. The revizor himself represents the 
day of judgment. In general, we find that Gogol’s under- 
lying motive, different from Moliére’s genial worldliness, 
is deeply religious. 


CHAPTER III 


HUMOR THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF JOKES 


Since the joke is a relatively ignoble and simple vehicle 
of humor, found most commonly in crude and primitive 
drama, a study of the development of humor in the Russian 
comedy very naturally commences with the joke as the 
first subject under consideration. 

The comic dramas of Catherine are especially rich in 
jokes, the majority of them of a character that could be 
understood outside of Russia as well as at home. They are 
frequently the usual ones of the comedy of manners. Thus 
when in her comedy O Time the intelligence of a certain 
silent girl is questioned, the usual succession of jokes 
follows: 


If she is stupid, it is by inheritance. For the lady, her grandmother, 
is not over wise; the apple falls not far from the apple-tree. 


And a little later in the same scene the remark is made: 


Wonders of wonders! And you have found a silent girl in Moscow! ? 


Catherine had a sprightly mind and she liked her fun but 
her work is always shallow. She employs the rather easy 
method of laughing at the incongruous around her, without 
worrying too much about reform. Like the modern writers 
of farce, she used every art to produce a laugh. The very 
fact that she often forgot to clinch the moral teaching in 
her comedies, constituted her most powerful claim to the 
attention of the general reader.” The dull formalism of 
her Khanzhakhina, for example, amuses the reader just as 


1 Catherine, O Time, I, 12. 

2 How far such a point of approach was removed from the general 
practice of the authors of her age can be judged from the words of 
Kotlyarevsky: “Our authors of the eighteenth century were to a large 
degree didactics, who valued in their work most of all the spiritual 
edification which was therein contained.” ... Kotlyarevsky, Literary 
Movements of the Epoch of Alexander, p. 5. 


28 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


it had once amused Catherine, yet so humorously is she 
presented that the sermon against hypocrisy which she 
really is intended to be, fails to make itself obnoxious. 

Many of the jokes of Fonvizin cluster around the general 
subject of education, or the lack of it, in Russia.*® If we 
bear in mind the fact that the teachers themselves were 
coarse and dull, as often as not ex-coachmen, it is little to 
be wondered at that the councillor’s wife says in all serious- 
ness: 


Isn’t it true that in France live for the most part Frenchmen? 


To this Ivanushka replies, according to the note, “ with 


ecstasy ”’: 
Vous avez le don de déviner.* 


This woman wanted to learn at least, but Taras Skotinin 
(whose name suggests membership in the family of animals, 
Mr. Beastly perhaps in English), scion though he was of 
an ancient provincial family, had no such revolutionary de- 
sires. He can best explain himself: 


Yes, to prove that education is nonsense, let us take the case of my 
uncle Vavila Filelyeyevich. Nobody ever heard about grammar from 
him, nor did he want to hear anything about it from anybody else, 
but, my goodness, what a head he did have. 

“What kind of head?” asked the stern old Pravdin, who never 
fathomed a joke in his life. 

Well, here is what chanced to happen to him. Astride a speedy 
ambler, and drunk at that, he ran into the stone gate. The man was 
tall, the archway was low, he forgot to bow, —and so then he hit 
his head on the gate, thus the back of my uncle’s head was bent clear 
back to the saddle, and the brave steed bore him through the gate to 
the front of his own house all the while bent backwards. I should like 
to know whether there is upon this earth a learned pate which would 
not have been crushed by such a blow, but my uncle, be it said 
to his eternal memory, upon sobering up only asked, “Is the gate 


ck 


unharmed? ” ® 


Fonvizin also made very liberal use of jokes that deal 
with marriage. In fact, in The Brigadier we have a whole 
3 Fonvizin, Sochineniya, p. 231. 

4 Fonvizin, The Brigadier, Ill, 3. 
® Fonvizin, The Minor, IV, 8. 


HUMOR THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF JOKES 29 


play honeycombed with marital infidelity. Almost every- 
body that is married falls in love with someone who be- 
longs to somebody else. Occasionally a couple of them 
pursue one willing victim. In the whirl of the ensuing ex- 
citement time is still found to rail at one’s own mate and 
to praise the wife of another. All of the troubles of life 
seem to come from that person whom the law has mali- 
ciously fastened upon a poor, innocent mortal. Ivanushka 
even adduces this evidence: 

He (the father) did not believe that there was a devil until his 


marriage; however, after having married my mother he soon came 
to believe that an unclean spirit does really exist.® 


But in praising the wife of someone else, both the briga- 
dier and councillor wax eloquent. Says the councillor: 


Do you know what a brainy companion you have? She is worthy 
to be the president of the whole board. My, what a woman she is.’ 


Fonvizin was at heart an ardent Russian and his especial 
contempt was reserved for those who slavishly aped French 
manners and customs. Thus he satirizes the councillor’s 
wife in The Brigadier for this very affectation: 


How fortunate our daughter is! She is going to marry a man who 
has been to Paris. Oh, joy, oh joy! I well know how it is to live 
with a man who has never been to Paris.’ 


There are other jokes with the same intent, in fact 
Ivanushka is himself a joke of the first order. All he lives 
for is to rail against Russia and to glorify the external 
virtues of France, with no more appreciation or understand- 
ing of the real France than the aforementioned Skotinin. 

The satire against a woman who is superstitiously avari- 
cious is continued in the person of Madam Prostakov who 
has a part in Fonvizin’s best play, The Minor. It is then 
the humor of derision and disgust that“is displayed when 
she, wildly waving her arms, turns to her husband and 
cries: 

What do you mean he didn’t die! What are you trying to fool me 
for? Can it be that you don’t know that some years ago at my 

6 The Brigadier, I, 3. 7 The Brigadier, I, 1. 


30 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


behest they put him in the church books! ‘Then my sinful prayers 
did not turn out any better than that! § 


There are also the common jokes which turn on a mis- 
understanding either of a foreign language, as when the 
wife of the brigadier thinks her son is swearing an oath 
when he is only speaking French; ° or on the context of a 
conversation, as when Taras Skotinin, hearing his name 
mentioned casually, takes it as a term of address and comes 
clear in to say, “‘ Here I am.*° 

The presumption of servants in aping their masters is 
also made use of to obtain a laugh. One of them holds 
forth in this fashion: 

Above all, we always find in your house wise people, knowing 
people who, like us, are in a position to put the whole world into 


words, people of high thoughts and with clever artifices, in a word, 
people like ourselves, ramblers.1+ 


There are, furthermore, jokes based on the prejudices or 
absurd mental aberrations of some character. Thus one 
old lady explains her opposition to a marriage in these 
words: 


I dislike all lovers from nature, and where I hear only of love, there 
an enemy pops up.?” 


Besides these easily recognized jokes, there is to be found 
in Catherine and to a less degree in Fonvizin a large group 
of pithy sayings, old proverbs, or simply bits of homely 
philosophy. It is indicative of her real interest in Russian 
life that Catherine saw fit to employ these at a time when 
they had not been considered of any value at all. Here 
are some which she included: 


He who pursues many hares will often not catch one.? 
What the sober man keeps in his mind the drunken man keeps 
on his tongue.!4 


8 The Minor, I, 6. 

9 The Brigadier, Il, 5. 

10 The Minor, Il, 2. 

11 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, I, 3. 
42° O Time, 1II,"3. 

13 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, I, 1. 
14 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, I, 3. 


HUMOR THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF JOKES 31 


Put your trust in God, but don’t get careless yourself .15 
Don’t spit in the well, you may chance to drink the water.1¢ 


As we have stated above, the proverbs of Fonvizin are 
less in number. The following list is almost exhaustive: 

The fool may lie as much as he wishes, nobody will pay any attention 
to him.17 

The dog howls and the wind blows.18 

God is high up and the Tzar is afar off.19 


There are other jokes of various kinds in the comedy of 
Catherine’s day, but our chief interest in them lies in 
noting that while they were employed with telling effect 
from the strictly humorous standpoint, yet they do not 
always, indeed rarely do they, blend into the context in 
which they are placed. The task of learning how to fit 
these elements into a single organic unity lay ahead of the 
writers of comedy in Russia. 

Much of the humor in the great comedy of Griboyedov 
is related to that of Catherine and Fonvizin. Jokes about 
marriage more smoothly and delicately told are still con- 
sidered effective: 

There’s a certain Princess Lasova here, a widow, and a horsewoman 
—she doesn’t attract many cavaliers to ride with her—one day 
she had a bad smash: her jockey let her down— he was apparently 
counting the flies. She was ungainly before so they say, and now 


she’s a rib short, so she’s on the lookout, for a prop in the shape of 
a husband.?° 


Liza, the personal maid of Sofia, in The Misfortune of 
Being Clever, has a rather hard time arranging all the in- 
trigues that are necessary if she is to conceal her mistress’ 
relations with Molchalin, the secretary of her father. This 
leads her to observe with some heat: 

Ah! Keep clear of the gentlemen! Be ready for trouble with them 


at any time. The Lord deliver us from the greatest of all afflictions 
—a gentleman’s anger and a gentleman’s love! ** 


15 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, III, 8. 

16 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, Il, 5. 

17 The Brigadier, IV, 4. 

18 The Minor, III, 7. 20 The Misfortune of Being Clever, Il, 9. 
19 The Brigadier, III, 6. 71 The Misfortune of Being Clever, I, 2. 


32 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


There are in this same play two instances when the 
advice of an older man to a younger, although not meant 
to be funny, sounds more like a joke to us than like serious 
counsel. In the first case, Famusov gives the following ad- 
vice to Chatzky who has applied for the hand of his 
daughter: | 

I should tell you not to be a fool (which in this case meant that 
he should give up his liberal ideas and not refuse to cringe before 
those high officials who had it in their power to give him advance- 


ment); secondly, not to neglect your property; and last but not least, 
to enter the service.?? 


In the second case, Molchalin, the very antithesis of 
Chatzky, explained his theory of success: 

My father bequeathed me some advice: first and foremost, make 
yourself agreeable without exception—to the master of the house 
in which you live, to the man who brushes his clothes, to the porter 


and the doorkeeper, and in order to avoid trouble, you should make 
friends with the doorkeeper’s dog.?® 


As in the earlier comedies, many of the jokes center about 
a servant and her love intrigues. In one place Molchalin 
and Liza present a variation of a familiar theme when the 
supposed lover of the mistress pays tribute to the “ mourn- 
ful beauty ” of the maid.** Later Liza’s rdle becomes still 
more complicated when Famusov, the master of the house, 
begins to show a disposition to flirt with her. Once, for- 
getting himself, he says with pompous self-satisfaction: 

Look at me: I don’t want to boast about my constitution, but 


I’m hale and hearty in spite of my gray hairs: I’m a free man, 


a widower, my own master,...and yet I’m renowned for my 
asceticism ! 


Here Liza was about to interrupt him with reminders 
of his past conduct. She began: 


I take the liberty, sir... 


But Famusov retorted with that time-worn argument 
of vested conversatism: 
22 i.e., to work for the state; The Misfortune of Being Clever, II, 2. 


23 The Misfortune of Being Clever, IV, 12. 
24 The Misfortune of Being Clever, IV, 12. 


HUMOR THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF JOKES 33 


Silence! It’s a dreadful age! You don’t know what they’ll be up 
to! Everybody’s forward, and the girls are the worst of the lot! 25 


Such a bewildering array of attentions quite confused 
poor Liza and inspired terror in her toward all males. She 
cried: ! 

Well, all the people in these parts! She wants him and he wants 
me! And I, ...I1m the only one who’s mortally afraid of love! 


And it seems to me that I’ve gone and fallen in love with Petrusha, 
the butler! °° 


Not all the jokes in Griboyedov, however, could find 
prototypes in the age of Catherine. His life was spent 
almost entirely during its active years in the reign of Alex- 
ander I, an era when the breach between the conserva- 
tive and liberal forces widened appreciably. The early 
humanitarian efforts of Alexander had served to encourage 
the young liberals to do some original thinking. When, 
however, the emperor became absorbed in foreign affairs 
and forgot the needs of his people, a period of cynicism 
and dissatisfaction settled down upon Russia. The younger 
element, personified by Griboyedov in Chatzky, looked 
forward to the future in which they hoped to see their 
propaganda of agitation to bear fruit. On the other hand, 
the older generation, represented especially by Famusov, 
turned their eyes backward to the glittering age of Cath- 
erine. Both sides of the unavoidable conflict are given a 
hearing in The Misfortune of Being Clever. 

The following description of Famusov’s uncle reveals a 
sympathetic understanding of a representative of the old 
order: 


He ate from gold, not silver, with a hundred servants in livery to 
wait on him; he always drove six horses; he spent his life at the 
court .. . and what a court! Very different from what it is nowa- 
days. He was at the Court of the Empress Catherine. And in those 
days the men of importance... big, heavy men they were too 
... didn’t simply nod their heads ... they bowed properly. A 
grandee in high favor seemed to be of different flesh and blood from 
other men, and to be nourished on different food. And my uncle was 


25 The Misfortune of Being Clever, I, 4. 
26 The Misfortune of Being Clever, Il, 14. 


34 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


like a prince or a count! He had a serious air and a haughty bearing, 
but when he wanted to get’ into favor he could bend himself double. 
One day, at a levee, he happened to stumble, and fell so heavily that 
he nearly cracked his skull. The old man began to groan, his voice 
was hoarse ...he was favored with the Imperial smile . . . the 
Empress deigned to be amused. ... And what d’ye think he did 
then? Picked himself up, pulled himself together, was going to make 
a bow... and fell again... this time on purpose. Shouts. He 
did just the same thing a third time. What d’ye think of that, eh? 
. .. Why, you men of the present day aren’t in it with him! ?* 


While at the same time this passage shows that Griboye- 
dov knew well the heated sincerity of the younger men: 
Now let us take one from our number, from the young men, and 
you will find an enemy of self-seeking, one who neither asks for a 
position nor for a promotion in rank, he leads his mind into the 
sciences, famished for learning, or else God himself awakens in his 
soul a zeal for the productive arts, the high and the beautiful ones, 
. whereat they at once shout: “Stop thief! Fire!” and at once 
you are counted by them as a dangerous dreamer.?® 


However much Chatzky and Famusov were opposed to 
each other in most respects, it is significant to note that 
they agreed that Russia was good enough for the Russians 
without the addition of foreign frippery. 

The jokes of Gogol are more difficult to pick out than 
those of any of our other authors. His whole attitude is 
humorous and his characters are funny in themselves, not 
exclusively because of what they happen to be doing. In 
his earlier comedies, however, the jokes are more easily 
isolated than in his later works. For example, in his play 
The Gamblers Ikharev, the card-sharper, says to the servant 
at an inn where he is engaging a room: 


No noise? ‘That’s good, but aren’t there enough of the cavalry 
flying about, I mean the jumping bugs? 


The servant is ready for any eventuality: 


That is, you mean to mention the presence of fleas? Don’t worry 
about that. If a flea or a bug bites you we will be responsible: 
we stand on that.?® 


27 The Misfortune of Being Clever, II, 2. 
28 The Misfortune of Being Clever, II, 5. 
29 Gogol, The Gamblers, I, 1. 


HUMOR THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF JOKES 35 


In a later play, The Marriage, we have, besides many 
of the usual jokes that the title might suggest, some sharp 
digs at the slowness of a mature bachelor in his matrimonial 
intrigues. After Podkolesin, who seeks a wife, has told 
the matchmaker to come another day, she cries out in 
exasperation: 


If you want to go and look at her, go and look. You act as if 
you were going to look at merchandise.*®° 


A little later in the same scene she harasses him again: 


You know, already there’s a gray hair in your head, pretty soon 
youll not be fit for family cares. 


There is in this piece a good example of a pun on an 
absurd-sounding name. The lady remarks concerning one 
of her suitors: 


Listen, how about this, if I marry him will I at once acquire the 
name of Agathe Tikhonovna Yaichnitza? Gracious, what a name! 


This name would suggest to a Russian audience some- 
thing like this: ‘“‘ Agathe, the daughter of Tikhon (the 
gentle, quiet, peaceful one), of the family Omelet.” 

In The Marriage we have also the humor of the incon- 
gruous. Kochkarev thinks he has met the aunt of the 
bride before, perhaps at the house of a certain Madam 
Biryushkina, who has had something happen to her, he 
cannot quite recall what. He thinks she is recently married, 
but the fact is that she has broken her leg. 

And badly broken it.... 


“Oh well,” replies Kochkarev nonchantly, “I remember, some- 
thing or other happened: she either got married or she broke her leg.’ ?+ 


These jokes are of course not particularly distinctive or 
original. But in the supreme comedy of the period, the 
famous Revizor, Gogol has treated us to a more subtle 
brand. It is a high comedy which has for its theme an 
arraignment of the greatest curse of the time, wholesale 
corruption in official circles.** Instead of revealing to us 

80 Gogol, The Marriage, I, 8. 31 The marriage, I, 18. 

32 For an interesting review, from the liberal point of view, of the 
social satires from Kantemir to Gogol, roughly speaking, see: Dobrolyubov, 
Sochineniya, vol. I, pp. 97 ff. 


36 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


one powerful personality, he has endeavored to attain his 
end by putting before our eyes a whole group of men who 
act as if they were but parts of a single machine. The 
entire play is a complete unity, there is not an extraneous 
line in it. Every humorous turn is there for a purpose, 
every little episode bears an evident relation to the rest of 
the comedy. The whole play, indeed, is a joke and a good 
one. 

A group of corrupt officials received word that a chief 
inspector from Petersburg had come to town to check up 
on their sins. The mayor went to see him, found him living 
in apparent disguise in great poverty, and took him home 
to his own house where he was treated as an eminent per- 
sonage. Both the wife and the daughter of the mayor fell 
in love with him. He promised favors to all the officials 
and took in return ‘loans.”’ Finally he was compelled by 
urgent business to leave town. ‘The officials thought they 
were safe because he had taken their money. 

A letter he had mailed previous to his departure was read 
by the “faithful public” in general assembly convened. 
In this epistle he praised their gullibility and called them a 
“hospitable and benevolent people.” He revealed, more- 
over, that he was in reality only a minor clerk and that 
such a gorgeous welcome had been a great surprise to him. 

While they were all discussing this flippant letter, terrible 
in its complications, there came the word that the real revizor 
had arrived and was earnestly desirous of going over the 
public business with them. They must stand an investiga- 
tion of their misdeeds without time to cover them up... . 
Consternation, fear, anger, and impotence, overcame them 
all at once. They could only stand transfixed. 

Thus The Revizor actually holds its own under the most 
severe test to which a comedy can be subjected, that of 
being told in outline form. Humor is so bred into the very 
frame that even a short résumé appears not only funny, 
but also unified and progressive; the surprise ending as a 


vehicle for humorous effect is exemplified. If one were to ~ 


summarize a comedy from the age of Catherine in this 
sketchy way, it would hardly seem funny, while a concise 


a lL 


HUMOR THROUGH THE MEDIUM OF JOKES Cw) 


outline of the plot could be thought out only with the 
greatest difficulty. There are too many loosely-placed epi- 
sodes, too much material that should be omitted to obtain 
unity. The authors wrote disjointedly, hurriedly. Gogol, 
on the other hand born with a humorous turn of mind, and 
endowed by nature with a fine artistic sense, not only 
profited by the mistakes of his predecessors and the in- 
spiration of friends like Pushkin, but in addition, he actu- 
ally spent eight long years in writing and polishing his great 
drama. 

In The Revizor, each one of the jokes fits into its own 
place, indispensable to the ebb and flow of episodes. For 
example, in the very first scene the mayor advises the judge 
as follows: 


It is bad that-there is drying in your very court-room so much 
rubbish, and that there is over the cupboard with the papers a 
hunting-whip. I know, you like the chase but it is better to take 
everything in its proper season and then, of course, when the in- 
spector has gone away, you can hang it back again; also about that 
assessor of yours, ... he, no doubt, is a knowing fellow, but he 
has a scent about him, as if he had just come out of a wine-fer- 
menting plant,—this also is not good. A long while ago I wished 
to speak about this to you, but was diverted by I don’t know what. 
There are remedies for this condition, if this is, as he says, actually 
his natural odor. You might advise him to eat onions or garlic or 
something else. If this be the case Kristian Ivanovich (the district 
physician) can help with various medical preparations.** 


So cleverly inwoven were these satirical jibes, and so 
well sustained was the humor throughout the play, that 
even the tzar was not offended, but ‘‘ was unusually good- 
natured, and laughed with all his might” ** at the first 
performance of The Revizor. 

In summarizing the general characteristics of our whole 
period we find that puns and jokes in their conventional 
forms are decidedly more numerous at the beginning than 


83 The Revizor, I, 1. In this same connection cf. the mayor’s advice 
to the overseer of charitable institutions and the inspector of schools in 
this same scene, and to the postmaster in the next. 

84 N. V. Gogol: Sochineniya i Pisma, Tip. Samoobrazovaniye, vol. 6, 
p. 24. 


38 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


at the end. Since a great humorous drama is characterized 
by its absence of puns and jokes rather than by their 
presence, the increasing perfection of the art more and 
more tended to force them out of the higher comedies into 
the less pretentious realm of farce. ‘They were not suited 
to the requirements of the newer stage, for they do not 
possess the dramatic possibilities of a humorous situation, 
nor do they furnish the lively clashes which ensue when two 
or more different individuals engage in a snappy humorous 
dialogue. While it must be admitted that the jokes in the 
earlier comedies, taken simply as jokes, were really funny, 
yet, since progress in the art of comedy writing is marked 
not so much by the cleverness of isolated jokes as by. the 
skill of the artist in weaving them into the play so that 
they become an integral part of the action, the early 
comedies of Catherine and Fonvizin fall far short of the 
excellence of The Revizor. For in this comedy the jokes 
are hardly jokes at all, rather funny stories which were 
once jokes in the author’s mind, but which he has smoothed 
down, fused with the other elements of the comedy, and 
fashioned carefully to meet the requirements of one 
homogeneous plot. 


CHAPTER IV 
HUMOROUS SITUATIONS 


One of the greatest weaknesses of comedy as an expres- 
sion of life has always been its tendency to treat of groups 
of people rather than of dynamic individuals. Not long ago 
Bergson wrote that there is “this essential difference be- 
tween tragedy and comedy, the former being concerned 
with individuals and the latter with classes.”’* A definition 
like this limits comedy to an inferior field of aetion, for it 
can never hope to treat of the most complex impulses of 
man. It must always take the simpler desires which are 
common to a considerable number of people and leave un- 
touched the deep emotions which distinguish a certain per- 
sonality from all the rest of his kind. The microscopic 
scrutiny of motives is not in its province. The moment 
it attempts to analyze these less obvious characteristics it 
is in danger of losing that spontaneity and color which have 
long been identified with the word comedy. The tragic 
point of view, on the other hand, has been that we are 
purified by witnessing the human suffering which must in- 
evitably appear when we apply the glass to an individual 
life. Tragedy, then, is in a sense a search for truth, which 
if it becomes penetrating and exhaustive, may lead even 
beyond the limited space of a drama into a prolonged psy- 
chological endeavor to portray the subconscious mind, . . . 
witness Dostoevsky and the modern school in Russia. At 
least the results will be different from those achieved by 
the comedy, which, in order to insure the conventional 
happy ending, must be tinged by a certain optimistic view 
of life. 

_ Catherine, whatever her faults, held consistently the comic 
point of view. She reasoned little, she prodded, and she 
poked fun at all sorts of evils, but in every situation we 
can hear a sly chuckle that belies the seriousness of the 
written word. 

1H. L. Bergson, Laughter, p. 165. 


4oO - THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


Superstitution was one of the favorite objects of Cather- 
ine’s satirical thrusts. In O Time she everlastingly digs 
her highly superstitious subjects. Early in the play we 
are regaled with the sight of Khanzhakhina, an elderly 
woman, in great distress; she explains her fright: 


I rushed to the spot and oh! to my horror . . . I poor sinner that 
I am! and I saw that there had fallen from the shelf the glazed 
pot, beloved by my husband, from which he always ate his milk 
gruel; it fell, my dear fellow, yes, and broke into bits; and nobody 
was in the room. This is not a good sign. I fear that I or my 
granddaughter may die.” 


At another time this same Khanzhakhina was relating 


how a grasshopper had by his presence foretold the death — 


of her husband.* Another one of the same set, Chudikhina, 
was frightened from the room when she was told that 
thirty years before a man had died on the very spot where 
she was sitting.* 


Frequently Catherine presents enlivening scenes where — 


servant’s love is held up to our view; and more where situa- 
tions are made funny by absurd exaggeration. Nekopeykov 
(without a kopek), a man with enlarged imagination, pro- 


posed in all seriousness that they catch rats and sell their — 


tails for ropes at an enormous profit. At this the ponder- 
ously sedate Dremov showed interest: 


Dremov: But won’t they be rather short, not to speak of any thing 
else? 


. NEKOPEYKov: For long ones we could entwine them with hemp, ~ 
but besides it’s perfectly evident that a rat’s tail can bear a strain — 
ten times greater than its thickness. Did you ever happen to hold a — 
rat by the tail? The rat, of course, is much thicker than its tail, — 


but the tail never pulls apart; why is not that feasible? .. 5 


Nothing daunted, the man went on to explain a further — 
plan of his for building a fleet of trading ships on govern- | 
ment credit, the profits from which should go to the 


promoters! 


2 Catherine, O Time, I, 6. 

Bi Cl Td Mme ALL, 18) 

4 O Time, III, t. 

® The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, Il, 7. 


a 2 ‘ = = 


HUMOROUS SITUATIONS + AI 


Some of Catherine’s humorous situations are mere ap- 
peals to the low and brutish. They are frequently common 
horseplay, where a laugh is gained at the expense of some 
miserable victim of rowdyism. Her audiences probably 
enjoyed this strain of coarseness that runs through her 
work. 

Another of Catherine’s pet antipathies was all manner 
of secret gatherings, for she considered them ready instru- 
ments for stirring up disorder. She was for that reason 
_ opposed to the spread of freemasonry as it was then prac- 
tised in Russia. Her comedies about masonry do not, 
therefore, present impartial observations, but there are all 
sorts of humorous situations in them. One of her satires 
on secret organizations bears the title The, Siberian Shaman. 
In this play we have an instance of a tale of wondrous heal- 
ing related by a servant: 

My mistress became weak .. . she was simply starved. He (the 
shaman) brought her a certain herb tonic, but the phial was broken 
to pieces, and the servant, not daring to speak about it, changed it 


for a phial of clear water. Our mistress not knowing the change, 
kept drinking this water with a little spoon, and she got well.® 


These examples of Catherine’s satire, shallow and often 
without a basis of fact, show, at any rate, that the empress 
was not above seeing the funny side of life. 

Fonvizin, it would appear, had slightly less of the whim- 
sical in his make-up than did his empress. But he did 
have considerably more ability in the construction of the 
mechanical effects for his humorous situations. Certainly 
some of this facility was gained from his translations from 
Moliere, Holberg, Ovid, and others, as well as from the 
influence of certain of his masters who were not coachmen 
either by trade or temperament, notably Professor Reichel. 
Among his first semi-original works was a reworking of a 
French play, Sidnez, by Gresset, under the title of Korion, 
which he brought out in 1764. Although it is little thought 
of by Russian critics it well illustrates Fonvizin’s ability to 
make a mechanically smooth-running piece from the idea 
of someone else. The hero, Korion, because he has de- 


8 The Siberian Shaman, I, 12. 


42 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


ceived his sweetheart, retires to the country and takes what 
he supposes to be poison. Meanwhile his sweetheart has 
forgiven him and appears in company with his friend Me- 
nander. The hero is beside himself with remorse for his 
hasty act. In even-flowing couplets, which add to the melo- 
dramatic effect of his tragic flourishes, he cries: 

I shall see you never more! 


A cruel fate is violently separating us! 
I have seen you, but alas, too late! 


All is now lost, and I cannot hope for help: 
I drank a cruel poison and I await death.’ 


Then with the singular good fortune that usually awaits | 


a hero it turns out that the poison was only water! 
Although such a theme is not original, the success of these 
couplets proves that Fonvizin must have had a certain 


technical cleverness to enable him to adapt old material — 


to a contemporary audience, and produce withal so effective 
a climax. 

The Brigadier, usually considered to be a satire on all 
things foreign, has many humorous situations which de- 
pend for their success on our amusement at seeing the 
excesses to which their foolish affectation of French man- 
ners has led some of the characters. In the first act Ivan- 
ushka and the councillor’s wife discuss with true-to-form 
ennui the boorishness of their Russian neighbors. For a 
Russian audience the effect is greatly heightened by the 
use of French roots with Russian endings, with the result 
that the language is stilted and unnatural. With all the 
rest goes the usual lack of respect of anything, and a shal- 
low attempt to appear perfectly sophisticated. 

The pair keep up their bored and contemptuous court- 
ship, neither of them at all serious. They simply believe 
that in France it is the fashion to have “ affairs.” 

Fonvizin followed his empress in satirizing the old times. 
In this connection he has created a funmaker in Taras 
Skotinin, a lover of the soil and of rural life as it was in 


7 Korion, III, 3. 


H 
< 
2: 
4 
a 
i 
; 
é 


HUMOROUS SITUATIONS 43 


the so-called good old days. Even the lady of his choice 
was less beloved by this rustic than the pigs which she had 
inherited. Says Skotinin: 


I love pigs, sister: and we have in the vicinity such enormous pigs 
that there is not one of them which, standing on his hind legs, 
wouldn’t be higher than any one of us by a whole head.° 


The harshness and cruelty of former days are satirized, 
not only as such conditions occurred among clownish swine- 
herds, but also among people who might be expected to 
know better, government officials and the like. Madam 
Prostakov echoed an idea long prevalent among the nobility 
when she disclaimed all utility in the study of geography 
for a noble because he could order his coachman to take 
him wherever he wished to go without himself knowing the 
route.° A little later in the same act Madam Prostakov 
admitted the propriety of bribery. 

To offset this unscrupulous type, Fonvizin created Staro- 
dum to be an exemplar of the old Russian virtues, a Rus- 
sian Cato, and the mouthpiece of his own philosophy, rather 
than the object of his satire.*° 

But with regard to the humorous situation as handled by 
the next important writer of comedies, we find that Griboye- 
dov knew very well that a funny scene is made doubly so 
if the speaker seems to be unaware of the laughter he is 
provoking. Thus Sofia in The Misfortune of Being Clever 
declares: 


“We sit until it is quite light out of doors, and how do you think 
we occupy ourselves? ” 

The servant is discreetly ignorant. 

“God knows, miss! It’s no business of mine.” 

Sofia replies artlessly: 

“He takes my hand and presses it' to his heart, he sighs from the 
depths of his soul, and he never ventures on the least impropriety. . . 
and that’s how we pass the whole night . . . hand in hand, his eyes 
fixed on me.” 


8 The Minor, I, 5. 

® The Minor, IV, 8. 

10 Starodum is probably the literary personification of the father of 
Fonvizin. For a discussion of this point, see: Borozdin et al., Istoriya 
Russkoy Literatury, Moskva, 1908, p. 412. 


44 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


All this has been spoken in the most serious tone. In- 
deed, when poor Sofia sees that it is being taken in a dif- 
ferent light, she is genuinely puzzled and asks: 


You’re laughing! What possible reason have I given you to laugh 
like thate 14 


The humor in this situation is of a refined sort, lying 
quite as much in the naiveté of Sofia as in the absurdity 
of her tale. Thus a situation which might have degenerated 
into vulgarity is so skillfully handled that it becomes deli- 
cately and pathetically funny. 

Sofia is a humorous character because of her too romantic 
nature. Not so the Princess Tugoukhovsky, mother of 
six daughters, for each of whom she was seeking a husband. 


Chatzky, she hit upon as just the right man for her pur- — 


pose. He had been abroad, was young and unmarried. 


She was all enthusiasm ... until she discovered that he — 


had not the distinction of being a Gentleman of the King’s 
Bedchamber and that he was certainly not rich. Upon 
learning this she fairly shrieked at the prince, who had 
been sent to make the young gentleman’s acquaintance, 


Prince, prince! Come back! ?? 


Although this situation comes close to being common in 
its application, it is valuable in relieving the monotony of 
the long dialogues among Famusov, Chatzky, and Skalozub. 

Not all the humor of this drama, however, is farcical. 
Griboyedov has also worked out a rather involved psy- 
chological study of the fact that no group of people can 
repeat the same story without changing it in one way or 


another. The Russian version of this familiar theme tells — 


the story in such detail that a whole series of humorous — 


situations is produced. Chatzky was a bold, progressive 


spirit; Molchalin a spineless, bootlicking creature. The 
two simply lived in different worlds. Chatzky was sin- — 


cerely in love with Sofia; Molchalin thought it wise to 


pretend to be. At a certain ball Chatzby twitted Sofia — 


11 The Misfortune of Being Clever, I, 5. 
12 The Misfortune of Being Clever, III, 7. 


HUMOROUS SITUATIONS 45 


about her “ knightly ” lover. Whereupon simple, misguided 
Sofia, seeking revenge, whispered to one of the guests that 
Chatzky was mad. The rumor spread, each succeeding 
person eagerly seizing on it and embellishing it. Soon 
Sofia’s half-hearted statement, clothed upon until it be- 
came quite unrecognizable, came to be the gospel truth, 
The result was partly a study of mob psychology with all 
its dramatic possibilities from the humorous point of view, 
and partly something more elusive. For the working out 
of the scenes is more elaborate than anything in the Rus- 
sian drama of the previous age. The effect is not simply 
that of a howling mob crying in one voice, “‘ He’s crazy; 
down with him.” ‘There are genuine distinctions between 
the different characters. The granddaughter is impressed 
quite differently from Famusov, as she naturally would be 
in real life. The humor in the situations is more complex 
than anything we have seen before. Besides the main 
current consisting of easily intelligible exaggerations, there 
are more subtle streams as well, streams which have been 
used, by the way, as texts for all sorts of propaganda. 
We smile as each guest takes up the tale, but our amuse- 
ment is not so secure as when we smile in superiority at 
Molchalin, weak fellow that he is. For here we are ridi- 
culing the best people of their day, those to whom power 
and privilege were a heritage, the class that was cultured 
if there existed any culture in the Russia of that day. The 
process of condemnation in all its ramifications is exceed- 
ingly complex and the more we study the episode the more 
guardedly we must smile. 

Griboyedov, then, treated his humorous situations rather 
fully, bringing out details and providing a background. 
He is less crude than Catherine, less obvious than Fonvizin, 
and his subjects are more profound than those of either of 
his predecessors. His humorous situations are equally as 
amusing as theirs, but more subtle and more civilized. 

Not for two decades do we detect any conspicuous change 
in the way Russian dramatists handled the inevitable humor- 
Ous situations. Then it was that the immortal Gogol, with 
his keen appreciation of wit, gave us a more elusive and 


46 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


sparkling array. They were not so strained, they came 
more naturally, with less conscious effort than we have seen 
before, even in the one important comedy of Griboyedov. 

For example, in the very beginning of Gogol’s play The 
Marriage, we have Podkolesin, a bachelor and a gentleman, 
who has decided at the urgent entreaties of his friend to 
try to get married. He is so self-conscious and fearful of 
being funny that he becomes extremely funny. To Pod- 
kolesin. his approaching marriage seemed the most im- 
portant event imaginable and he was surprised when others 
did not share this feeling. For example, after his servant’s 
visit to the tailor the master queried: 


“And didn’t he (the tailor) ask whether the master wanted to get 
married or not?” 
“No, he didn’t say anything,’ 


b] 


was the stolid reply.1% 


Instead of ridiculing Podkolesin Gogol simply turned the 
spotlight on this one vulnerable spot in his nature, his 
vanity, and made that quality seem pathetically funny to us. 

A humorous situation arises when Kochkarev implores 
the lady whose hand he is pressing Podkolesin to seek, to 
do something which will extend happiness to this poor man. 
The lady, a person of uncertain age, innocently and with 
an air of great benevolence says: 


I couldn’t dare to think that I could contribute to his happiness. . . 
but anyway I’m willing.14 


His last hope of escape gone, the bridegroom suddenly 
becomes desperate. He pleads that the wedding take place 
at once, and again the lady is quite willing. But when 
left alone Podkolesin returns to his usual doubts. He de- 
termines to flee from it all. Fearing to be discovered by 
the wedding guests, he leaps on the window-sill, shouts, 
‘* May God give his consent,” jumps to the ground, and the 
last we hear of him are his words to a cab-driver, “To the 
Canal, beside the Semenovsky Bridge.” *° 

Such a play might appropriately be called a good drama 

18 The Marriage, I, 4. 
14 The Marriage, II, 10. 
15 The Marriage, II, 25. 


HUMOROUS SITUATIONS 47 


of marriage and might be read without annotation by 
anyone who enjoys a laugh-provoking tale. Not by any 
means is this true of Gogol’s more famous play, The Re- 
vizor, which is not only more typically and exclusively 
Russian but also more closely connected with the social 
problems of the day. To understand its full social signifi- 
cance we must remember that it was intended to be a satire 
on the corrupt officialdom of the time. It is intensely in- 
teresting and replete with proof that Gogol did his best 
to pack it full of the most humorous situations his imagina- 
tion could conjure up. 

In the first part of the drama we have an extravagant 
scene when Khlestakov, a penniless young clerk from the 
city, rescued from starvation by the mayor who believes 
him to be the revizor, becomes loquacious as he recounts 
his exploits in Petersburg, boasts of his literary attainments 
and his influence in high circles, and declares that he can 
strike terror to the great men of the capital.*° The humor 
of exaggeration is paramount. We are genuinely amused 
by the spectacle of big, important men shaking like leaves 
before a slip of a youth whom we know to be a full-blown 
wind-bag. Here also Gogol appeals to that side of the 
popular mind which enjoys the discomfiture on the stage of 
an official before whom in real life the populace must bow. 
Such ridicule, really a mild form of burning in effigy, satis- 
fies the same desire to throw off restraint. 

In the last scene of the comedy when word has been 
brought that the real revizor awaits the officials at the inn, 
we have a humorous situation which is effective largely 
because of its unexpectedness. It is the famous dumb scene, 
from which we quote the stage directions: 

The mayor stands like a post in the center with arms outstretched 
and head bent backwards. At his right hand are his wife and 
daughter with a gesture of straining toward him; behind them is the 
postmaster changed into a question mark turned in the direction of 
the audience; after him the school supervisor, lost to himself in the 
same guileless manner; after him, at the very edge of the stage, 


three ladies, guests, leaning on each other, the same satirical ex- 
pression on their faces aimed directly at the family of the mayor. 


16 The Revizor, III, 6. 


48 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


On the left side of the mayor: Zemlyanika (overseer of charitable 
institutions) with his head bent slightly to one side, as if he were 
listening to something; after him the judge with arms open wide, 
squatting almost to the floor and making a motion with his lips as 
if he wanted to whistle or say: ‘“ There you are, old grandmother, 
you sure have got George’s day now.17 After him Korobkin (a 
retired official and an honored man in the city), turned toward the 
audience with a winking eye and with a caustic insinuation regarding 
the mayor: after him at the very edge Dobchinsky and Bobchinsky 
(two gentlemen whom Kropotkin has called the “town Gazette” ), 
with their arms outstretched to one another. The other guests stand 
simply like posts. For almost a minute and a half the petrified 
group maintains this position. Then the curtain is dropped.t® 


The effect is telling at the same time that it is funny. 
At first the audience is perplexed; for an instant it does not 
see the point... . Gradually the fact begins to dawn 
that the real cause of the sudden silence is a long-delayed 
attack of conscience. Laughter bursts forth at the thought 
of such an unusual occurrence among the bureaucracy. 
This moment of hesitation in the coming of the climax only 
serves to make the humor more clear-cut and lasting when 
we finally comprehend the whole situation. Furthermore, 
such an unusual scene in a talking drama gained great 
effectiveness because of its entirely unheralded and unex- 
pected position at the end of a comedy in which the 
characters were noted for their volubility. 

Considered broadly, then, the humorous situations in the 
comedies of our period underwent a complete regeneration. 
Catherine’s early scenes stand out boldly and sharply on a 
rough, rude stage, crudely effective in spite of their sim- 
plicity. To Fonvizin fell the lot of polishing off and re- 


17 This is a very common expression referring in a sarcastic sense to 
some unpleasant surprise. In 1497 Tzar Ivan III named one day of the 
Ir or 12 days dedicated to St. George, viz., November 26, as a day on 
which those peasants who wished could change their domicile. In 1597 
Boris Godunov allowed the landowners, if they cared to, to compel the 
return of any peasant who had not been absent more than five years. 
However, the muzhik was still allowed to change his abode on St. 
George’s Day. The Code of Alexis in 1648 cancelled even this privilege, 
and the peasant became a serf bound to the soil. But the annual recur- 
rence of the day reminded the serfs of their lost right of migration. 

18 The Revizor, V, 9. 


HUMOROUS SITUATIONS 49 


organizing the material with regard to form. Griboyedov 
added new elements, so that his work is marked by ver- 
satility of treatment; while it was the privilege of Gogol to 
bring to these already effective humorous situations a certain 
wealth of detail and warmth of color which they had pre- 
viously lacked. ‘Thus it is that in his best play they have 
a depth of feeling, a range of ideas, and a sympathy of 
humor which bear only evolutionary resemblance to the 
efforts of the great empress whereby she hoped to inspire 
others to emulate her in writing for the newly founded 
Russian theatre. 


CHAPTER V 
HUMOROUS DIALOGUE 


The humor of the dialogue is more apt to be successful 
than that of its parallel form, the lengthy joke. The 
climax, coming with less obvious effort, is likely to be more 
of a surprise. The audience does not know so well before- 
hand that it is going to be expected to laugh, and conse- 
quently it has less time to set in motion those forces of 
human obstinacy which would tend to resist the effect. It 
goes under the influence of wit with less of a struggle when 
the dialogue form is used, for the element of unexpectedness 
adds zest to the process. The effort is more likely to “ come 
off’ as it were, and nothing is more futile than a joke 
which does not come off. 

While much of the humorous dialogue of Catherine is 
utterly crass, it is a fact that occasionally she did include 
snatches which do come off. She is especially successful 
with her female characters who are usually great chatterers. 
Take the scene where a young girl is being educated by a cer- 
tain servant and her sister-in-law, Snokha. The dialogue is 
from the one-act comedy Madam Vyestnikova (Mrs. Tale- 
bearer) with a Family. 


DAUGHTER: Well, my suitor comes, what shall I do then, Maria? 

Marta: He will enter and bow to you. 

DaucHTeR: And I will bow to him on my feet. 

SNOKHA: You are already on your feet! What do you mean? 

Marta: No, you bow to him simply, decorously. 

DAUGHTER (making a foolish bow): Just like that? 
: Maria: Yes, and when he comes up to you and asks for your 
anda 

DaucuTerR: I know, I know. ... I extend my hand to him and 
say: “ Now, kiss it.” 

SNOKHA: By no means! You give him your hand if he keeps 
requesting it, not saying a word. ¥ 

Maria: Yes, make it appear to him a ue as if you were giving 
your hand to him reluctantly. 

DauGHTER: And suppose I don’t want to give him my hand. . .? 


a ae 


HUMOROUS DIALOGUE 51 


Marta: Then by all means don’t show him what you are thinking. 
DaucuHTER: All right. I know about it now.! 


In this instance the humor lies in our mental projection 
of the difficulties which a simple, not over-bright girl would 
have in getting into the straight-jacket of the formalism of 
society. In others of Catherine’s humorous dialogues we 
find hints of satire directed against this same careful ob- 
servance of form. For example, in O Time Nepustov, 
desiring an audience with Madam Khanzhakhina, is told 
by the servant Mavra: 


Believe. me, please, what I am telling you. You can’t see her. 
She is praying now and I myself wouldn’t dare to go into her apart- 
ment. 


And when Nepustov inquires if the entire time passes 
in prayer, Mavra replies: 

No, our exercises vary; however, everything goes in order; some- 
times we have the usual services, sometimes the reading of the 


mineychetiy,? and sometimes, leaving off the reading, our mistress 
is kind enough to preach to us about prayer, continence, and fasting.® 


And yet this same devout mistress, according to Mavra: 


Threw a prayer-book at me once so hard that I had to go to bed 
’ for a week, she cracked my head open: .. .” 4 


This fierce fanatic typified by Khanzhakhina is the object 
of Catherine’s choicest satire. In portraying her she often 
made use of a dialogue between some sharp-eyed servant 
and another party, often a moralizer bearing the name of 
Mr. Righteous One, Mr. Goodfellow, or Mr. Justice, after 
the manner of The Pilgrim’s Progress. 

The dialogue of Fonvizin differs from that of Catherine 
not in essentials but in form, being not quite so loose and 
irregular. His representative of the ritualistic, avaricious 
type found in Catherine is Madam Prostakov of Te Minor. 
She would do anything for a kopek and even education she 
regarded only as a means to greater wealth. Some of her 


1 Madam Vyesinifovs with a Family, scene 2. 
2 A collection of the lives of the saints compiled by the metropolitan 
Makariy (1542-1564). SO es Lat) 4 O Time, I, 1. 


52 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


traits may be observed in the following three-cornered 
dialogue. Tsifirkin (Cipherer), the teacher of mathematics, 
has set Mitrofan a problem in dividing three hundred rubles 
which the boy has supposedly found in the road. 


TSIFIRKIN: It came to a division. How much would your brother 


receive? : 
MitRoFAN (computing in a whisper): One times three is three, 


one times zero is zero. 


Then the mother, who has been unable to follow the 
intricacies of this involved problem, begins to become sus- 
picious and demands sharply: 


What’s this about a division? 

MITROFAN: You see, the idea is to divide the three hundred rubles 
that we found into three parts. 

Prostakov: He lies, my dear child! ‘The money was found. 
Well, then, don’t divide with anybody. Take it all for yourself! 
My dear little darling, Mitrofan, don’t try to learn this absurd 
science.® 


The humor of such a type, forerunner of the samodursha ° 
of Ostrovsky’s The Storm, is of necessity heavy and un- 
wieldy. In any dialogue in which Madam Prostakov, or 
any of her class, takes a prominent part there is lacking 
that light, airy fun of the imaginative romance. And no 
less is this true of practically all of the dialogue of Fon- 
vizin, for through it all the humor is somewhat obscured by 
the many social questions therein raised. 

The humorous dialogue in the comedy of the age follow- 
ing Catherine is not so successful in its relation to the plays 
as a whole as might be presumed from a scattered reading 
of fragments. There is too desperate an effort to tack on 
amoral. Even in the best comedy of this transition period, 
Calumny, by Kapnist (1798), the dialogue is deadened by 
moralistic speeches and the humor is of inferior quality. 
If the fables of Krylov are thought to be an exception to 


5 The Minor, Ill, 7. 


6 The samodur (fem. samodursha) was a hard, grasping type of mer- 


chant made famous by Ostrovsky, the greatest Russian dramatist of the 
nineteenth century. The so-called Kingdom of Darkness was a symbolic 
name for the merchant class in Russia. 


HUMOROUS DIALOGUE 53 


the rule, a closer study will reveal the fact that this type 
of writing was after all but a natural development from the 
moralistic propensities that had prevailed before. 

By the time of Griboyedov there was an effort to include 
more of the purely artistic and less of the sermonistic ele- 
ments in the comedy. Humorous dialogue had, therefore, 
more opportunity to link itself closely with the plot as a 
whole. An effort was made, moreover, to prepare the 
audience before the dialogue was commenced. ‘Thus in 
The Misfortune of Being Clever Natalia Dmitrievna does 
not introduce her husband to Chatzky abruptly. A pleasant 
little conversation of renewing old friendships precedes. 
We are prepared to see some angelic sort of male, pale and 
delicate, but when, instead, a veritable athlete is ushered 
in the shock is great and the laughter spontaneous. Says 
this Platon Mikhailich: 


Hullo, Chatzky, old chap! 
Cuatzky: My dear Platon, this is capital! 


PLATON: When you get married, old chap, remember me! The 
boredom of it will make you whistle the same tune. 

Cuatzky: The boredom! What? You're paying tribute to it 
already ? 


Go back to the regiment! They'll give you a squadron. What was 
your rank? 


At this Natalia Dmitrievna, afraid of losing her darling, 
breaks in: i 


My Platon Mikhailich is in delicate health. 

CuatTzky: Delicate health? How long’s that been? 

NaTattA: He’s always got rheumatism and headaches. ... Oh, 
my pet, you’ve flung open your coat and your waistcoat is unbuttoned. 

Button yourself up quickly. 

CuatzKy: Well, God have mercy on you! You've certainly 
altered in a short time. Wasn’t it at the end of the year before 
last that I knew you in the regiment? No sooner was it daylight 
than your foot was in the stirrup, and you were off on your horse, 
whether the autumn wind' was blowing in your face or at your back. 

PLATON (sighs): Heigh-ho, old chap, life was glorious then.’ 


* The Misfortune of Being Clever, III, 5. 


54 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


In the dialogues between Chatzky and Famusov in the 
same comedy, there is a certain humor of a dry, intellectual 
sort, rather than of the pure, spontaneous brand. Humor 
there is unquestionably, however, for the spectacle is in- 
deed amusing when two men carry on an extended and 
heated conversation, neither having the faintest idea of 
what the other is driving at and each horrified by the other’s 
position. Such conversations are skillfully worked into the 
main thread of the plot of Griboyedov’s masterpiece.* 

In one of the earlier attempts of Gogol we are surprised 
to find a dialogue which might have been written in the 
days of Catherine and which is of value only as a basis 
of comparison with his more finished productions. The 
play itself is known as Fragment. An episode runs as 
follows: two characters are gossiping about a mutual ac- 
quaintance, one Nataliya Andreevna Gubomazova (of the 
rouged lips), Sobachkin says: 


Do you know that she whips her children herself? 

Mariya: No, you don’t say so! Oh, what a shame! Can it 
possibly be true? 

SOBACHKIN: Here’s the cross on it. Permit me to tell it to you. 
Once she ordered her naughty little girl to lie down, of course on a 
bed, but she herself went into another room, I don’t know what for, 
for switches, I presume. Meanwhile, for some reason or other, the 
little girl left the room and in her place came the husband, he lay 
down and fell asleep. The mother of course reappeared, ordered 
another girl to sit on his legs, covered him with a sheet, and engraved 
her husband up in good shape.® 


Such a dialogue, while crudely funny, does not fit into 
the scheme of the piece very well. The precise reason for 
its insertion is not very clear, partly no doubt because it is 
only a fragment, partly because the genius of Gogol had 
yet found the field in which it was fitted to come to fruition. 

In The Marriage the dialogues are better, although the 
subject has not yet enough of the native element to give 
him full sway. In this play, for example, two suitors for 
the same lady meet at the home of the fair one.° The 

8 The Misfortune of Being Clever, II, 2. 


° Fragment, scene 2. 
10 The Marriage, I, 15. 


HUMOROUS DIALOGUE 55 


two carry on a verbal fencing match, amusing but certainly 
not unique nor original. This is typical of the dialogues in 
the entire play. 

But Gogol is at his best in an atmosphere which is more 
truly Russian. Then and only then is his humorous dia- 
logue peerless and inimitable. 

Thus in the second act of The Revizor the mayor is 
in great fear lest the inspector expose his misdeeds, while 
Khlestakov, the poor clerk who is taken for a revizor, is 
in mortal fear lest he be arrested. They face each other 
in one of the most dramatic colloquies one can imagine: 


Tue Mayor: I wish to offer my good wishes! 

KLESTAKOV (bows): My respects! 

Mayor: Pardon me. 

KHLESTAKOV: That’s nothing... . 

Mayor: It’s my duty as the chief official of the town to take 
pains to see that no vexations to any newcomers and respectable . . . 

KHLESTAKOV (at first he stammers a little but at the end of his 


speech speaks loudly): What can be done about it? ... I’m not 
BUUty eo eh aaly Tl) pays) oe) Chey ll) send) it: to me) from ‘the 
country. ... He’s more to blame: he gives me meat as hard as a 


board; and the soup — the devil knows what he put into it, I had to 
throw it out of the window; he starves me with hunger the whole 
day through. ... The tea’s so strange: it smells of fish, not tea. 
I ask you, what kind of person am 1... that’s all I have to say! 

Mayor (becoming timid): Forgive me, in truth I’m not to blame. 
On our market the meat is always good. The Kholmogorskiye mer- 
chants, sober people and good, bring it in; I really don’t know where 
he gets such meat. But if it isn’t right, then ... Permit me to 
suggest to you to go with me to another inn. 

KuHLESTAKOV: No, I don’t won’t to! I know what another inn 
means: it means to prison. ... Indeed, how do you have any right? 
Yes, how do you dare? ... You see I... I serve in Petersburg. 
(ize? sets bolder.) 1, 1, 1°... 

Mayor (aside): Oh, my God, how angry he is! He has learned all, 
those cursed merchants told him all! 

KHLESTAKOV (more courageously): If you come here with all 
your whole police force—I won’t go. I'll take it direct to the 
minister! (He pounds on the table with his fist.) What’s the matter? 
What’s the matter with you? 

Mayor (agitated and trembling with all his body): Have mercy, 
don’t ruin me! A wife and small children ... Don’t bring mis- 
fortune on a man! 14 

11 The Revizor, Il, 8. 


56 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


So the clever conflict is protracted from line to line. The 
mayor becomes more and more fearful at the same time 
that Khlestakov becomes bolder and bolder. It is clearly 
this development, this progressive humor that distinguishes 
the dialogue from all other media of humor we have con- 
sidered. | 

Some of the best dialogue in The Revizor is that in 
which the female characters take part. The two women 
whom Gogol introduces are Anna, the wife of the mayor, 
and Marya, his daughter, both a them essentially social 
climbers of the harmless sort. Their intense interest in the 
revizor, his appearance, his age, and his manners, stands out 
in sharp contrast to the queries of the officials concerning his 
willingness to be bribed, or the rigidness of his interpreta- 
tion of the word duty. Apparently the slick, urban manner 
of Khlestakov satisfied them, for both at once tried and 
indeed succeeded, or so they thought, in capturing him. 
The skill with which Gogol has Khlestakov lead on the two 
women at the same time adds a charming and thorough 
amusing touch to the play. 

Towards the end of his stay Khlestakov inadvertently 
kissed Marya on the shoulder while she was looking out of 
the window. Then when she pretended to be offended, he 
quickly fell on his knees, protesting his repentance. At 
this melodramatic juncture the mother appeared and packed 
the daughter off. For an instant the lover arose . . . but 
no sooner was he left alone with the mother than he fell 
on his knees and announced: 


Lady, as you see, I am burning up from love! 
Whereat the mother replied, 


Why are you on your knees? Oh, get up, get up! the floor here 
is not at all clean. 


Undisturbed by such frigid realism the ardent lover con- 
tinued: 


No, on my knees, unfailingly on my knees, I want to know what 
the verdict is for me, life or death. 


When the puzzled woman inquires whether it is herself 
or her daughter with whom he is in love, he cries: 


HUMOROUS DIALOGUE 57 


No, I am in love with you. My life is on the brink. If you do 
not crown my steadfast love, then I am not worthy of this terrestrial 
existence. With passion in my breast I beseech your hand. 


The woman again becomes realistic. 


But be kind enough to see that I am in a certain condition. ... I’m 
married. 


Then in one of the most delicate touches in the play 
Khlestakov murmurs: 


That is a trifle! For love there can be no separation; and Karam- 
zin said: “The laws condemn.” *?? We will depart to the shelter of 
the billows. ... Your hand, I beg for your hand.1? 


Humorous dialogue in the hands of Gogol, then, was a 
subtle instrument which he knew how to employ with telling 
effect in his more mature plays. Always sparkling and 
vivacious in every situation, he was especially at home 
when dealing with the kind of humor which enabled him 
to cause two characters to play back and forth against one 
another, often unconscious of the mirth they were provok- 
ing. Accordingly he availed himself of that deep human 
trait, inherent in every one, which causes us to enjoy being 
let in on a joke that the rest are not allowed to know. 
In the two examples of humorous dialogue quoted from 
The Revizor none of the parties concerned sensed enough 
of the whole truth to see the point. Even Khlestakov, who 
knew more than the others, was on too thin ice to enjoy the 
dance. Asa result, the reader, being skillfully made to feel 
that he himself is wise enough to see where others are 
blind, cherishes a kindly disposition toward the author who 
has made this compliment to his egotism possible. By this 
simple application of his knowledge of human nature, Gogol 
has succeeded in that most important of attempts for a 
dramatist in the realm of comedy, that of getting his audi- 


12 From a sentimental poem of Karamzin, the great representative of 
sentimentalism in Russia, entitled The Island of Bonholm. The first verse 
runs as follows: “ The laws condemn the object of my love, but who, my 
heart, can oppose himself to thee?” Found in Sochineniya, Karamzin, 
Moskva, 1820, vol. VI, p. 184. 

13 The Revizor, IV, 12 and 13. 


58 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


ence on his side and in a pleasant frame of mind. Thus 
humorous dialogue has been made to do its share of the 
work of producing in final result a tremendously successful 
comedy. 

In general it may be said that the humorous dialogues 
produced by the Russian comedy writers of prominence up 
to the period of Ostrovsky came to be increasingly effective. 
Commencing with the pioneer efforts of Catherine a con- 
spicuous improvement could be noticed by the time of 
Gogol, when they were more closely related and more 
genuinely helpful to the unified progression of the plot as 
a whole. At length they became not so much extraneous 
insertions as polished vehicles of expression which were able 
really to carry along the action. Well-suited as they are 
by nature to depict sharp contrasts they, unlike puns and 
jokes, increased in value as the author paid more attention 
to the deeper demands of humorous art and less to those 
elements which are merely facetious. As a consequence, 
Gogol especially used them with marked success to bring 
out on the stage, to the intense amusement of his number- 
less audiences, those inimitable characterizations of the pre- 
posterous foibles of light-headed and ambitious women. 


CHAPTER VI 
HUMOROUS TYPES 


Of all the types in the Russian comedy from Catherine 
to Gogol the one which probably comes the closest to those 
of the western comedy is the gallophile. Apparently in 
most of the modern world imitation of the culture of France 
has been attended by excesses which have given a pretext 
for strong reactions against the adoption of foreign man- 
ners and customs. ‘There was even in England in the 
seventeenth century a strong feeling of resentment against 
gallomania, a feeling which found expression in Wycherly’s 
The Dancing Master, among other works. While of course 
Moliére in Les Femmes Savantes and Les Précieuses Ridi- 
cules showed that in France herself the most sensible people 
' were opposed to ridiculous affectation. 

In Russia in the later comedies of the period under con- 
sideration, those of Griboyedov and Gogol, the opposition 
to gallomania, although present to the very end, did not 
take shape in the form of one character as it did in the 
earlier works. Khlestakov in The Revizor, who suggested 
by his vaporous personality some of the qualities of the 
gallophile, was that and much more. Most of the guests 
at the ball and in fact the heroine herself of The Misfor- 
tune of Being Clever were likewise tainted by a yearning 
to imitate the external veneer of French manners, but there 
was no clear-cut representative of the type, one who could 
unmistakably be called a gallophile. 

Quite the opposite is true of the first part of the period. 
For example, in The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina of 
Catherine, the gallophile, Russianized and dressed in Rus- 
sian clothes, is seen in Firlyufyushkov. This dandy dis- 
plays a passion for gossiping of all kinds and when a recent 
comedy is under discussion he promptly disagrees with the 


60 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


view that the play was treating of society in an impersonal 
manner. He says of the characters: 


I know them all by name.? 


Another quality of Firlyufyushkov which he imitated 
from the French “ gentleman” was that of the point of 
honor. For although he is lukewarm about paying his 
debts, he insists that nobody shall have the right to satirize 
him, on the stage.” He is a boaster and a coward.° 

A better known and more highly developed type of gal- 
lophile is Ivanushka, hero of Fonvizin’s The Brigadier. 
Compared with Firlyufyushkov he is less of a braggart and 
more of a man in spite of his youth. He displays, however, 
the same ennui toward life, in fact his first words in the 
very first scene of the play are: 


Gela (hélas). 


Ivanushka is quite a gentleman in his dealings with his 
future wife. He frankly admits that he considers her 
frightfully crude. He does not play with the feelings of 
any woman but the councillor’s wife who, being herself a 
gallophile, thoroughly understands the situation. There is 
no attempt to take advantage of the simplicity of a young 
girl. His affaire de coeur is at least on the level. 

On the other hand his love for foreign nonsense makes 
Ivanushka brutally disrespectful to his parents. With sting- 
ing contempt he says: 


I am endiferan (indifférent) toward all that concerns my father and 
mother.* 


These two, then, Firlyufyushkov and Ivanushka, are the 
only clear-cut examples of the gallophile found in the 
greater comedy of the period from Catherine to Gogol. 

Another amusing type closely connected with the west is 
that of the so-called savant. In The Name-day of Madam 
Vorchalkina Nekopeykov affords an example of Catherine’s 

1 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, I, 7. 
Cf. The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, Il, t. 


2 
8 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, IV, 7. 
4 The Brigadier, I, 3. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 61 


use of this character. Nekopeykov is a poverty-stricken 
fellow possessed of a brain fertile with plans for money- 
making. Says he: 

This paper, sir, is one on which the very greatest welfare of the 
empire depends. . . . I have thought so much of increasing the money 
oi Russia . . . yes, and even the silver as well . . . to such a degree 
that every man who has need of any coins will have only the labor 
of picking them up from the street where they will be rolling around.® 


Like Alceste in Le Misanthrope of Moliere Nekopeykov 
attributes his lack of success in legal matters to his failure 
to make personal acquaintance of the judges: 

In telling of a crony of his Stikhotkachev (Mr. Verse- 
weaver ) he says: 

. . . What a brain! At any time on any occasion he will compose 
a thousand verses of any kind you wish. Although he praises me best 
of all, yet he gives justice to all in his verses; for example, a while 


ago he said about me that it was impossible to think of anybody more 
wise or thoughtful than I. What could be more just? ® 


Like his kind the world over Nekopeykov always made it 
his business to keep in the company of the well-to-do in 
order to be sure of not starving. 

All in all Nekopeykov reminds one of the impractical and 
stilted Pancrace of Moliére’s Le Mariage Forcé. He is not 
an indigenous Russian personality. But Catherine under- 
took to russify this character and in so doing committed a 
glaring inconsistency. Flying in the face of the fact that 
the characteristics of Nekopeykov and his kind are those of 
the pedant of French literature, not those of the hard-headed 
Russian trader, she nevertheless tried to connect him with 
the ancient merchant class in Russia which believed in 
illiteracy. Thus she makes Nekopeykov declare his distaste 
for letters.’ But the fact is that he has nothing in common 
with the sharp, practical student in the great school of life 
which Beaumarchais has delineated in his Figaro. Neither 
does he belong to the circle of the travelling philosopher, 
that apostle of optimism, the celebrated Dr. Pangloss of 

5 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, I, 5. 


6 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, V, 11. 
7 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, I, 5. 


62 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


Voltaire. On the contrary Nekopeykov is a pedant en- 
tirely out of touch with any sort of practical living. He 
certainly belongs to the class of those shallow professional 
wiseacres who frequented the salons of les précieuses and 
pretended to read every book that came out. Thus Cath- 
erine’s attempt to make of him a Russian of the type which 
did not believe in learning, results only in distortion. 

Fonvizin succeeded in greater measure than Catherine 
had done in taking this type and making it true to Russian 
life. This he did in the persons of the three tutors of 
Mitrofan in The Minor. ‘These three tutors are introduced 
by Madam Prostakov as follows: 

We pay money to three teachers: the deacon from Pokrov, Kutey- 
kin, comes for grammar; and Tsifirkin, a retired sergeant, teaches 
arithmetic to him, my dear sir. They both come here from the city. 


The city, you know, is three versts from us. A German, Adam 
Adamych Vralman, teaches French and all the sciences.® 


In connection with Vralman there is an even more pene- 
trating brand of satire, for the Russian for the word German 
is Nyemetz meaning the dumb one. Thus when Fonvizin 
was casting around for a name for the dullest of tutors he 
achieved the desired effect by calling him Vralman (the 
babbler) a German. This Vralman proves to be a former 
coachman of Starodum and utterly unfitted for his position. 

There is this great difference between these representa- 
tives of so-called learned men of Fonvizin and the Neko- 
peykov of Catherine: the former really did not want to 
be teachers but believed that they must in order to make 
a living, like the drunken M. Beaupré in Pushkin’s The 
Captain’s Daughter; whereas Nekopeykov took the intel- 
lectural road because he thought it to be easier than work- 
ing with his hands. Not one of them corresponds to the 
more lovable Karl Ivanovich in Tolstoy’s Childhood and 
even he was not a Russian type. Yet in the larger analysis 
all of these so-called savants in the comedy of the time 
of Catherine are one in that they are all only half educated 
and in that they all have prototypes in western literature. 
They are not peculiarly Russian personalities. 


8 The Minor, I, 6. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 63 


Quite in line with what would be expected in a period 
dominated so largely by the French influence the confidant 
and confidante making practically one type are found in 
varying forms throughout the whole cycle. 

Nepustov in Catherine’s comedy O Time is the living 
image of the old French confidant. His calling is as care- 
fully worked out and regulated as if he had been a char- 
acter in one of the classically correct dramas of Racine. 
Nepustov helps the play to observe the unities by going 
ahead and arranging all the details of the wedding for the 
real lover. Beyond this, however, he is a rather colorless 
personality, for since his friend does not waver in his 
desire to marry there is not the humor connected with him 
that there is with Kochkarev in Gogol’s The Marriage 
where the lover constantly tries to give up the pursuit. 

Mavra, on the contrary, the confidante of the heroine in 
this same play of Catherine, is of a more vivacious type. 
She actually influences the action of the comedy by her 
admonitions to her mistress concerning marriage.? But 
Mavra is not chiefly a confidante but a pert maid and as 
such she will be considered in a later section. 

Strangely enough, Fonvizin who imitated the French 
classicists in so many ways did not include in any of his 
more important plays a representative of the confidant type, 
the only character in any way similar to it being Menander 
in Korion who acts in the capacity of a friendly confidant to 
the hero. 

The Marriage by Gogol, on the other hand, affords a 
good example of a confidante in the person of Arina Pan- 
teleymonovna, the aunt of the heroine. This good soul be- 
lieves her niece will be happier if she marries one of her 
own class, a merchant, instead of angling for a dvoryanin 
(a gentleman in the most narrow and aristocratic sense). 
She says: 


Oh, Agatha Tikhonovna, you wouldn’t have spoken in this manner 
if your deceased father, Tikhon Panteleymonovich, had been alive. 
He used to come down on the table with his whole fist and shout: “I 
spit,” he would say, “on him who is ashamed to be a merchant: 


PO Tame, LL. 3} 


64 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


yes, and I won’t give,” said he, “my daughter to any colonel. Let 
others do it! And my son!” said he, “I will not send in to the 
civil service.” ‘“ Why,” said he, ‘‘ doesn’t a merchant serve the tzar 
as well as anybody else? ” 1° 


Clinging tenaciously to this one idea she tries, as far 
as she sees, to be a good confidante to her niece. 

The counterpart of Arina Panteleymonovna in the same 
comedy is Kochkarev, the friend of the lover. He is clearly 
a confidant of the militant type, for instead of consulting 
Podkolesin’s preference in the matter he decides arbitrarily 
on the woman whom his friend shall marry. Priding himself 
on his energy he stirs up the slothful lover with the words: 

What are you living for? Now, look in the mirror . . . what do 
you see there? A stupid face ... nothing more. But there, just 
imagine it, little children will surround you, not just two or three, 


but perhaps a whole sextet and all as much like you as one drop of 
water is like another.1+ 


These two then are the confidants of Gogol. 

Speaking broadly, therefore, we found that in all the Rus- 
sian comedies of our period except those of Fonvizin the con- 
fidant as a type has a place. In Catherine the type is iden- 
tical with the French classical school; with Gogol it is 
somewhat bolder; but the changes during the period be- 
tween these two authors were of a shallow nature rather 
than of a fundamental character. 

The next type to be studied is the rogue, familiar enough 
in western literature, and developed with the greatest full- 
ness in Spain. At his best the rogue was a picturesque 
fellow, lax in his morals but clever and, according to his 
code, a gentleman. The type in Russia was, however, de- 
generate, a weak imitation of a great and charming original. 

In The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina Catherine has 
twin representatives of the rogue type in Spesov and Herku- 
lov. Spesov is a poor sort of noble adventurer of the 
kind to be found in the Novelas Ejemplares of Cervantes; 
while Herkulov is only a rougher henchman to do the dirty 
work. True soldiers of fortune, they are proud of their 
position, and do not consider themselves bound by the laws 


10 The Marriage, I, 12; and II, 25. 11 The Marriage, I, 11. 


7 


HUMOROUS TYPES 65 


of common decency. They are always out of funds and 
absolutely unscrupulous. Being pressed for money the two 
form a dastardly plan for forcing Madam Vorchalkina to 
marry off her daughters to them at once. Then Herkulov 
says evenly: 


Well, and if she won’t believe this one, then we'll think up some- 
thing else, we’ll let drift abroad some other rumor, or we'll seek a 
means of obtaining our desire by deceit.'? 


Spesov, considering himself of high birth, had no use 
for people who were not in his own circle no mattter how 
upright they were. Once he sneered at good old Dremov: 


We neither at the present time nor in former days ever heard of the 
family of the Dremovs ...my grandfather surely did not asso- 
ciate with your grandfather.1* 


As to Herkulov, it was he who pounded Firlyufyushkov 
so unmercifully with his cane in a crude scene which is dis- 
tasteful to a modern reader.“ 

In The Gamblers of Gogol, a comedy made up entirely 
of rogues, Ikharev may be taken as the best specimen be- 
cause he represents all the immoral trickery of the others 
with the added quality of elaborate self-justification. Speak- 
ing to his pack of cards he thus tries to prove that his under- 
handedness is only for the good of humanity: 


But look at this, this is what you may call capital. Now I can 
leave an inheritance to my children! There she is, a pack of cards 
made to order ... areal pearl . . . serve me, my dear, as your sister 
served me: win for me also 80,000 rubles and I will erect a marble 
monument to your memory when I get back home; I’ll order it in 
Moscow.?® 


Although in general Ikharev is simply the conventionally 
callous rogue, Gogol has won praise for having him at the 
end unrepentant and confused in his moral values. This, 
it goes without saying, was a triumph of art over di- 
dacticism. 


12 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, Il, 2. 
18 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, Il, 7. 
14 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, IV, 7. 
15 The Gamblers, I, 2. 


66 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


Finally, no sketch of the rogue in the Russian comedy 
would be complete without the consideration of Khlestakov, 
the master bluffer, in The Revizor. No doubt it would 
raise a storm of protest to say that he is not a true Russian 
in conception. Yet certainly the realistic school in Russia, 
in all their exhaustive efforts to find indigenous types, never 
unearthed a character just like him. If we are to grant 
that he is a Russian, it must be in the larger sense of a 
member of the empire, not of Great Russia. For Khles- 
takov resembles a Little Russian in temperament and make- 
up. Although surely he is at bottom the old Spanish 
picaroon, there is added to this fundamental character all 
the charm and color which a people capable of bearing so 
sensitive an artist as Taras Shevchenko*® might easily 
produce. Then too Gogol himself was especially well suited 
to work out such a character, for he wrote his masterpiece 
Dead Souls around Chichikov, a lovable scamp who had 
much in common with Khlestakov. 

To begin with, Khlestakov is a dandy always, in spite 
of his poverty; besides being unable to eat coarse food 
he has the faculty of imagining some great good fortune 
which might befall him at any moment. How fine it would 
be to have them shout when he returned home: 


. . . Ivan Alexandrovich Khlestakov from Petersburg, give word to 
receive him! 17 


He lived in a world of fancy, so real that often, even 
in the midst of his boldest fabrications, one can scarcely 
believe that he is lying. Furthermore, he is always polite 
and charming, even open in his roguery, for when he makes 


his getaway he departs bidding good-bye to all with the 
greatest of good will. Says he: 


16 Shevchenko (1814-1861), a writer of Little Russian birth. From 
Russian sources it is difficult to get an unbiased judgment of his work 
because Great Russians frown on him for his almost exclusive use of the 
Little Russian tongue; while his name is praised, probably excessively, by 
the group which desire to maintain an independent Ukrainia. Under these 
conditions his work as an artist is apt to be either overrated or under- 
rated. 17 The Revizor, Il, gs. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 67 


Good-bye, Anton Antonich! Much obliged for your hospitality. 
I realize this from the bottom of my heart: that nowhere have I had 
such a cordial reception. Good-bye, Anna Andreevna! Good-bye, 
my sweetheart, Marya Antonovna! 1% 


The type of the ingenuous heroine, common enough in 
the west, in Lessing’s Minna von Barnhelm for example, is 
represented by Khristina in Te Name-day of Madam Vor- 
chalkina. Khristina, unlike her elder sister, believes that 
to love and to be loved is ‘‘ the pinnacle of human happi- 
ness.” *® But she is not simply a girl of tender emotions, 
for on occasion she can act with energy and decision as 
when she boldly discloses the foul plans of Spesov and 
Herkulov. This is all the more surprising when one re- 
members that she was completely hemmed in by the strict 
customs of the time. At any rate she is far more in- 
teresting than her namesake, the heroine of Catherine’s 
O Time, who tells her maid: 


I shall marry him if he takes me. But if he does not take me, 
then I do not want to marry him.?’° 


Marya, the recipient of Khlestakov’s advances in The 
Revizor, is a still more vivacious and interesting type. In 
her first words she admonishes her foolish mother who can- 
not wait to see the revizor: 


But what can we do about it, mother? It is all the same, in two 
hours we shall know all about it.?? 


She is more balanced than her silly mother; she is sweet 
and attractive, and even fairly well-read, for in one instance 
she forces Khlestakov to admit that his boasted authorship 
of a certain book Yury Miloslavsky is questionable.” 
Marya is also no mollycoddle. She keeps up a spirited 
argument with her mother concerning which was the more 
favored by Khlestakov.”* 

Finally it must be observed that Marya played the diffi- 

18 The Revizor, IV, 16. 

19 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, V, 1. 

20 O Time, Il, 1. 

») #2 The Revizor, I, 6. 
22 The Revizor, I, 6. 23 The Revizor, Ill, 8. 


> or 


68 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


cult rdle which Khlestakov’s lavished attentions forced upon 
her with great cleverness, and it was she who came nearer 
than anyone else to suspecting the genuineness of Khlesta- 
kov. Probably she was sincere in her angry outburst 
after Khlestakov had stealthily kissed her on the shoulder: 


No, this is too much . .. such impertinence! ... you treat me 
as you would some sort of girl from the backwoods... .?4 


Flattered by his attentions though she was, Marya did 
not, for all that, really give herself up to the ardent 
Khlestakov without misgivings. All in all she was a de- 
cidedly attractive heroine worthy of a better fate than 
befell her. 

The ingenuous heroine who had more influence than any 
other in the comedy of our period was Sofia of The Mis- 
fortune of Being Clever. Wad she not rejected the atten- 
tions of Chatzky and rushed to the hollow embrace of 
Molchalin, there would not have been the exciting cause 
for the incurable melancholy and misanthropy of the former. 
And if, moreover, she could have realized in time the posi- 
tion of Chatzky he would probably have forgiven her and 
things would have been happier. 

But Sofia could not understand this friend of her youth 
since he had returned from abroad.*”° The reason is patent 
when we learn that her ideal lover is one Molchalin of 
whom she says: 


Molchalin is ever ready to forget himself for others, an enemy of 
insolence, he is always modest and unassuming.?¢ 


That Sofia could tolerate such a deceiver proves in itself 
that she was a maiden of no discernment; yet when her 
father urges her to marry Colonel Skalozub she displays 
considerable independence of judgment and no little heat: 

“How fine that would be,” she cries, “I’d enjoy hearing all about 


fronts and ranks! He never spoke an intelligent word from his 
birth. It’s all the same, marrying him or jumping into the river! ” 27 


24 The Revizor, IV, 12. 

2° The Misfortune of Being Clever, I, 5. 
26 The Misfortune of Being Clever, I, 5. 
27 The Misfortune of Being Clever, I, 5. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 69 


Sofia’s charm lies not in her judgment, however, but in 
her sentimentality of a melodramatic kind like that for 
which the heroines of Jane Austen (especially the two in 
Love and Friendship) were noted. Thus when Molchalin 
falls from his horse she promptly faints as one would expect 
a girl nourished on eighteenth century French romances 
to do. At the close of the drama when Molchalin has been 
shown up to her, Chatzky twits her bitterly with the words: 


Hurry up now and faint! 78 


Even then when she has been thus scourged by Chatzky 
for her conduct, she answers his denunciation feebly, with 
a flood of tears and the distracted words: 


Don’t go on; I’m to blame all around! . . . but who would have 
thought that he [Molchalin] would have acted so cowardly! 


We have then at least three attractive girls of the in- 
genuous heroine type in the Russian comedy from Catherine 
to Gogol: Khristina, a girl of spirit; Marya, young, at- 
tractive, and astute; and the Sofia of Griboyedov, a pure 
sentimentalist. 

A specimen of the pert maid is to be found in the person 
of Mavra in Catherine’s O Time. It is clear that she under- 
stands thoroughly the character of her hard old mistress and 
it is by her artless and penetrating satire that the hideous 
hypocrisy of Khanzhakhina is revealed to the audience.” 

But Mavra does not always show her cleverness simply 
by detecting the faults of her mistress, nor in dialogue with 
the callers at the house. Sometimes she stands aside and 
speculates on the larger values of life. Although her rea- 
soning is not deep nor her conclusions infallible, yet her 
words often contain interesting bits of homely philosophy. 

Like Mavra, Paraskovya, the maid in Catherine’s The 
Name-day of Mu adam Vorchalkina, is given to sels at 
about love in a cynical vein. She declares: 


People in love are queer folks! You can hardly push them 
apart; once they are married you can’t introduce them to one 


28 The Misfortune of Being Clever, IV, 12. 29 O Time, I, 4. 


70 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


another. At once they have separate carriages, and in three weeks 
after the wedding it will even have gotten to such a pass that they 
will be ashamed to eat together... .°° 


Paraskovya had little faith in impractical and visionary 
people, being unable to comprehend the service they perform 
in compelling men to let their minds wander from the beaten 
track. In this respect she had much in common with 
Sancho Panza with his intensely practical outlook on life. 
Even when her really kind heart moved her to an act of 
kindness toward Nekopeykov she could not restrain her 
sharp and practical tongue from saying: 


We can’t be without a fool in this house.*4 


Thus the real and outstanding trait of Paraskovya was 
her pertness. She was sharp with everybody from her mis- 
tress to the servant Antip, and for everyone she had a 
ready answer. 

Liza, in The Misfortune of Being Clever, is another repre- 
sentative of this same type,—the pert maid. She is dis- 
tinguished by her boldness. Even to Famusov, her master, 
she says when he jollies her: 


Leave off! . . . you’re very flighty, that’s what you are! ... Be- 
think yourself, you old fellows. . . .°? 


Liza also delivered a little soliloquy on love as Mavra and 
Paraskovya had done. And Molchalin, who tried to make 
love to her, she advised: 


It is best that you do not indulge yourself, you who are looking 
for a bride: he is kindly and sweet who before the wedding does 
not eat and drink to satiety.®° 


Like Paraskovya Liza is canny and practical. By ad- 
monition and precept she tries to avert the catastrophe 
which threatens her mistress; but her advice is of no avail. 
For unlike the real confidant of the Figaro type Liza is 
possessed of no authority and little intellect. She cannot, 


80 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, V, 4. 
31 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, V, 11. 
82 The Misfortune of Being Clever, I, 2. 

33 The Misfortune of Being Clever, IV, 12. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 71 


therefore, force her convictions, she must remain what she 
is, a pert maid. 

The lovers in the Russian comedy of this time are weak 
representatives of that type. While part of their weak- 
ness is due to the lack of originality of the whole period, 
surely some of it can be attributed to the fact that Russian 
literature in general has not gone in for this kind of writ- 
ing. The active, stalwart lover of Nordic lands or the 
warm, passionate lover of the Latin civilizations do not 
strike a responsive chord in Slavonic countries. To be sure 
the western Slavs do not come under this broad generaliza- 
tion so accurately as those who live to the eastward. The 
fact, for example, that the great poet of the Poles, Mickie- 
wicz, in his Pan Tadeusz has some great love scenes proves 
nothing, for the Poles have always been under French 
influence strongly. Although Turgenev has strong love 
themes in his great novels, mainly, however, in connection 
with his heroines, he too spent much of his life in the west. 
In agreement also with this idea is the fact that love is 
more of an influence in those works of Tolstoy which ap- 
proach western standards, such as War and Peace and Anna 
Karenin, and much less so in those which are more exclu- 
sively Russian, such as The Cossacks, Sebastopol, and The 
Resurrection. Whereas with the slavophile writers, Aksa- 
kov and the rest, with the more modern Chekhov and 
Garshin, Gorky and Andreyev, or finally with the greatest 
and most representative author Russia has yet produced, 
Dostoevsky, love as we understand romantic love is not the 
dominant note. This does not mean that in the opinion 
of the writer Russians do not love, but rather that the 
love-theme has never been developed and polished to the 
degree that it has in the literature of the west. So far 
Russia has no great love story. 

If this be true it is little wonder that the writers of the 
Russian comedy of a century ago working largely on ideas 
borrowed from the west, considered the presence of lovers 
more as a part of their machinery to work with than as offer- 
ing opportunities for the perfecting of their art. Especially 
is this true of the period of Catherine. Neither Molo- 


72 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


kososov, Talarikin, Dobrolyubov, nor Milon, the four lovers 
in the four important comedies of Catherine’s day, were 
anything but colorless lumps of flesh. They were lack- 
ing in ordinary life to say nothing of virility. Their love 
speeches are recited as if learned by rote, the proposal 
scenes are mechanical and wooden. Dobrolyubov says to 
his sweetheart, for example: 


... Also I cannot conceal my thoughts from you ... my condi- 
tion will be unhappy until that time when my greatest wish shall 
be fulfilled. _You know in what it consists. My heart is known to 
YOu 


In a similarly dull and apathetic manner Milon reveals 
his pedantic personality when he says to the uncle of his 
sweetheart: 


My dear sir! .. . No, I cannot conceal longer my sincere feelings 
... no. Your goodness attracts with its power every secret of my | 
soul. If my heart is righteous, if it is worth being happy, on you de- 
pends its happiness. I make the proposition in this manner in order 
to have to wife your beloved niece.*® 


One has the feeling that all of these four lovers, al- 
though they make pretensions, are not really in love but 
are forced to it by some intangible outside force. 

The lover in Gogol’s The Marriage is moved by an out- 
side influence far from intangible, this influence being em- 
bodied in the person of his friend Kochkarev. Podkolesin 
then is the most unsatisfactory lover of all for he never 
even pretended to have a spark of feeling for any lady or 
for the institution of matrimony. His failure as a lover 
we must admit, however much we may condone his cool- 
ness. 

The question is raised whether Chatzky, a most unsuc- 
cessful lover in actuality, for he lost his suit, was in spite 
of this failure, a successful lover from the artistic point of 
view. Probably those people who would approve of the 
Alceste of Moliére would maintain the same position in 


84 O Time, I, 12. 
35 The Brigadier, IV, 1. 
36 The Minor, IV, 6. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 73 


regard to Chatzky, such is the similarity between the two 
characters.*’ Personally the writer, while admitting the 
great value of the comedy of character believes that it is 
unfavorable to the creation of this particular type. Just as 
in historical romances the lovers are rarely persons of promi- 
nence, so also when an author endows a character in a 
comedy with many elements of greatness, he thereby de- 
stroys the emotional elasticity which is a necessary part of a 
real lover. The emotional Sofia, therefore, was probably 
sincere when she declared that Chatzky with all his virtues 
was “not a human being but a serpent.” ** 

If Chatzky was so sincere that he had no time to be 
artistic, Khlestakov, the ‘‘ lover” in The Revizor, was such 
an artistic lover that he did not feel the necessity for be- 
ing sincere. At all events Khlestakov, endowed with the 
grace of a Don Juan, was a charming if insincere suitor, 
and even with this fundamental lack, comes closer to the 
ideal suitor than any of his predecessors in the Russian 
comedy. 

The type represented by the blundering manservant is 
also found in the comedy of our period. There is Antip 
in The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, an awkward, 
good-natured fellow who is fond of speaking in proverbs and 
making crudely witty remarks. In speaking of his master 
he shows considerable penetration when he observes that 
his master’s servants are more efficient than those of a 
certain neighbor because they are so well treated.*® 

He is such a blunderer that no one takes him seriously 
and he sometimes overhears plots not meant for his ears. 
But, blundering to the end, he is too stupid to make use of 
what he has overheard, thereby losing the opportunity to 
exert an influence on the plot. 

The ideds of Antip concerning marriage are unromantic 
to the point of sordidness. Thus when his master showed 
preference for the younger of the two sisters who already 
had two admirers, Antip in great disgust at such hairsplit- 

87 Cf. pp. 28 and 29. 


88 The Misfortune of Being Clever, I, 7. 
39 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, I, 3. 


74 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


ting advised him to take the one he could get more easily.*° 

Antip then was a homely fellow, not over-bright, but with 
an intense feeling of loyalty toward his master. If he was 
coarse in his manner, yet he displayed at the same time 
a warm heart. 

A blundering servant of even less intellect than Antip 
is Stepan, who does not appear after the seventh scene of 
the first act of Gogol’s The Marriage. From his brief ap- 
pearances we gain that he is chiefly stupid. Unlike Antip 
he offers no advice to his master nor has he any feeling 
of personal devotion to this master; he is content with 
carrying out the letter of his instructions incomprehensible 
though these may be. He is an underling in temperament 
as well as in position. 

The blundering manservant who comes nearest to meet- 
ing specifications is Osip, the attendant of Khlestakov in 
The Revizor. His relative importance in the play is fore- 
casted by his early delivery of a long and interesting 
soliloquy from the comfortable seclusion of his master’s 
bed. He describes in terse but vivid popular language the 
colorful details of their journey of bluff and extravagance 
from Petersburg to the scene of the story and their hope 
for a good time the rest of the way to their destination.* 
The only drawback in this sort of life, it seemed to Osip, 
was the fact that they were often in want of the barest 
necessities of life, food especially. For his master was 
wont to squander his substance on fine clothes and fancy 
food, leaving them often in a bad plight. He says: 


And why? ... because he doesn’t occupy himself with his busi- 
ness: instead of doing his duty he goes chasing around the streets 
playing cards. ... Oh, my God, even if it was only a bit of soup! 


You feel as if the whole world had been eaten up. 


Until he is really filled up Osip constantly reveals the 
emphasis he places on food. Even his popular philosophy 
touches on this subject, for he says: 


Oh, such a wretched life! On an empty belly everything seems 
heavy.*? 


40 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, IV, 2. 
41 The Revizor, II, 1. 42 The Revizor, III, 4. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 75 


But even if Osip did lose his buoyancy when he was 
hungry he was too canny a peasant to tell all he knew just 
because he had a good dinner. When the mayor’s wife, hav- 
ing fed him sumptuously, queries: 


Now then, tell me: do many counts and princes, as I suppose, go to 
see your master? 


Osip replies: 


(Aside) And what shall I say? If they have just fed me well, that 
means that in the future they will feed me still better. (Aloud) 
Yes, there come also counts.*? 


Another of Osip’s characteristics is his greed for gold, 
a quality which is evident when he even makes use of his 
master’s “‘ official’ position to have a letter mailed for 
nothing.** This seems a little like the last straw, as does 
also Osip’s request for hay to put under the mayor’s best 
Persian robe which the audience knows will never see its 
rightful owner again.** 

In the Russian comedy from Catherine to Gogol there 
are some characters which might well come under the broad 
designation of clowns. Some of them are noisy fellows, 
some of them are always silent, but all of them are queer. 
The best example of the silent type is Molchalin with 
whom the heroine of The Misfortune of Being Clever falls 
violently in love. Although he is perhaps not a clown in 
the ordinary sense, some of his actions are certainly for no 
purpose other than to amuse. Witness his burlesque at- 
tempt to ride on horseback,* or the description of his love- 
making given by Sofia; ** while not less grotesque is his 
mincing, fawning manner towards all those who he thinks 
have any influence. To Khlestova, the sister of his master’s 
wife, he finds it good policy to say: 

Your little pup ... what an excellent spitz he is! He’s not 


bigger than a thimble! I smoothed him all over: his hair is like 
silk !47 

43 The Revizor, III, 10. 

44 The Revizor, IV, 9 and 16. 

45 The Misfortune of Being Clever, II, 7. 

46 The Misfortune of Being Clever, I, 5. 

47 The Misfortune of Being Clever, III, 12. 


76 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


In contrast to the city-bred Molchalin, the next clown 
is Taras Skotinin, a country dullard and a clodhopper from 
Fonvizin’s The Minor. He is a cowardly bully, abusive to 
his hirelings yet profoundly superstitious. Thus when 
Madam Prostakov is about to have the tailor punished on 
a special day, Skotinin remonstrates: 


Who? What for? On the day of my betrothal! On account 
of such an event I beg of you, sister, to postpone the punish- 
ment till to-morrow; and .. .*% 


Skotinin is unlettered and tremendously proud of hi: 
When asked to read a letter he retorts: 


I! I have never read from the day I was born, sister! God 
preserve me from such boredom.*? 


His boorish manners and his delight in swine are illus- 
trated by the fact that upon being introduced to a stranger 
he inquired: 


I beg leave to ask, sir! JI don’t know your first and middle 
names, .. . in any of your hamlets do they raise pigs? °° 


In the scene of his last appearance Skotinin reveals his 
clownishness when he gives as his reason for going back 
home: 


Judge for yourself. People outreason me, but among pigs I my- 
self am the most reasonable of all.°1 


Skotinin then is a gross caricature, so gross that he would 
possibly be considered more stupid than funny in our day. 
But in the days of Catherine, if we may judge from the 
success of the play in which he had no small part, he must 
have been well received. 

Next to Skotinin the two town busybodies of Gogol’s 
The Revizor, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, are the most 
farcical. What the author intended them to be is set forth 
in a Notice which he wrote telling how the drama should 
be played. In this he wrote: 


48 The Minor, I, 4. 50 The Minor, I, 7. 
49 The Minor, I, 6. 51 The Minor, V, 4. 


HUMOROUS TYPES . 77 


The two town babblers, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, should be 
acted especially well. The actor must delineate them to himself 
well. They are people whose whole life consists in running about 
the town with messages of respects (all together) and in the ex- 
change of news. ... They are full of curiosity from the desire to 
have something to tell about. Because of this Bobchinsky even 
hiccoughs a little from the desire to finish telling it all the quicker. 
They are both little short fellows, unusually like each other, both 
with small paunches. Both are round-faced and cleanly clothed 
with smooth hair. Dobchinsky even has a small bald place on the 
top of his head.°? 


Clear as it is that Gogol never intended that they should 
be clowns, their nature is such that it has suited future 
actors and directors, always seeking to make the public 
laugh, to make them up in such a way that they are perfect 
buffoons. This tendency was evident very early in the 
history of the piece, for we have a despairing letter written 
by Gogol to a literary friend shortly after the first produc- 
tion, in which he said: 

Both of my friends, Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky, came off wretch- 
edly above my expectations. Although I thought that they would be 
wretched . . . I thought that their outward appearance and the posi- 
tion in which they are found would bring them out somehow or other 
and that they would not produce a caricature. Just the opposite 
took place: caricature was the exact result. Having seen them in 
costume before the production I already heaved a sigh.** 


The difficulty an actor playing either of these two parts 
would find in avoiding clownishness may be seen in the 
fourth act, when Khlestakov “ borrows ”’ from the company 
one after the other. After Bobchinsky and Dobchinsky 
have yielded up their tribute, a small sum each, the latter 
makes a request, as follows: 

The matter is of some delicacy: my oldest son, you will be pleased 
to see, was born to me already before my marriage . . . that is, it is 
only said to be so, but it belongs to me as completely as it would 
be in marriage, and all this, as is fitting, I topped off by the lawful 


bonds of matrimony. And so I wish, be pleased to see, that he may 
now be entirely, that is, my legal son, and be called as I: Dobchinsky. 


Shortly after this, Bobchinsky also makes a request: 


52 Gogol, Polnoye Sobraniye Sochineniy, Slovo, 1921, vol. 6, pp. 242-3. 
53 Gogol, op. cit., vol. 6, p. 135. 


78 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


Most humbly I beseech you, when you go to Petersburg, say to 
all the different grandees there: the senators and the admirals, that 
so and so, your grace or your excellency, there lives in such and 
such a town a man by the name of Peter Ivanovich Bobchinsky.** 


How any playwright could include such lines as these 
in his work and then feel hurt because the actors descended 
into the realm of farce in trying to interpret them is one 
of the many enigmas connected with the life of Gogol. 

The general type of boastful officer may be divided 
into two classes, of which the first includes those men who 
are concerned chiefly with the petty vanity of their calling; 
while the second includes those men who beneath all their 
bragadoccio really love the army and army life. 

An example of this first class is seen in Colonel Skalozub 
in The Misfortune of Being Clever. At the same time that 
he is immensely proud of his profession, he is also entirely 
at home reciting the glories of military life to a group of 
ladies over the teacups. Skalozub, unlike Chatzky, is just 
fitted to live among the frivolous set of Moscow. With real 
sincerity he expresses himself as follows: 


I am pleased at the skillful manner in which you touched on the 


prejudices of Moscow in favor of her best beloveds . . . the guards, 
the men of the guard, and those who guard, ... they shine like 
the sun with their gold and brocade. . . .©° 


The brigadier in Fonvizin’s comedy of the same name 
is a representative of the second and more substantial type 
of boastful officer. Not a whit less bombastic than Skalozub, 
he is, however, rougher and more of a fighting soldier than 
the other. To the brigadier, the great, important thing in 
life is to preserve carefully all distinctions in rank and 
position. So deeply did he ponder this question that it is 
not deliberate irreverence, we feel, which prompts him to 


54 The Russian words are siyatelstuo and prevoskoditelstvo respectively. 
The former, a symbol of nobility, may be applied even to a second lieu- 
tenant; while the latter, a symbol of official rank, could be applied even to 
the son of a peasant, provided he later attained to high place in the 
public service. 

°° The Misfortune of Being Clever, II, 6. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 79 


retort heatedly, in answer to his wife’s statement that all 
officers are the same in the eyes of the Lord: 


Wife, I tell you what: don’t butt in or I’ll soon fix you so that 
there'll be nothing to count on your head. If you were better ac- 
quainted with God you’d know more, and you wouldn’t babble such 
nonsense. How is it possible to imagine that God who knows every- 
thing is not familiar with our table of ranks? 5* It’s a aa thing 
even to suggest such a thing.®? 


Besides being rough to his wife the brigadier was abusive 
to his son. To this exasperating lad he cries out: 


Now, aren’t you a big blockhead? I called you a fool and you 
think that I’m flattering you: oh, what an ass! °8 


Even in his shameless love-making with the councillor’s 
wife the brigadier cannot forget his high rank and great 
exploits. Having interrupted recital of the splendors of 
Paris by driving off his son, he proceeds to regale the 
lady with tales of how he “ knocked the stuffing out of the 
Turks.” °° 

And when the brigadier actually proposes to her, he does 
it in these characteristic words: 


Imagine to yourself a fortress which a brave general desires to take, 
at that time he feels in the depths of his soul as I do now. I am 
the brave general, and you are the fortress which it is possible to 
breach no matter how powerful it is.°° 


Thus we have clear-cut examples of the two classes of 
boastful officer, Skalozub who fusses over the minutiae of 
army life, its gold braid and fine uniforms; and the briga- 
dier egotistic and uncouth, but passionately fond of actual 
army life. 


56 The table of ranks was a system started by Peter the Great, whereby 
each man in the service of the state whether soldier or clerk, had a right 
to a certain title, a certain uniform, and a certain scale of pay. It 
amounted to a militarization of the civil service. 

57 The Brigadier, I, 1. Also for an account of and an analysis of the 
relation of religion to the Slavic mind and temperament see: The Light 
of Russia, Donald Lowrie, Prague, 1923, pp. 33-36, and Chap. VII. 

58 The Brigadier, III, 1. 

59 The Brigadier, III, 4. 

60 Cf. Brandes, Ludwig Holberg und seine Zeitgenossen, 1885, p. 128. 


80 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


There is in the comedies of the age of Catherine a certain 
type °° which, though in itself far from humorous, sometimes 
appears funny because of its excessive stiffness and unnat- 
uralness in the face of a humorous situation. This moral- 
istic type gives a sort of humor by contrast and caricature. 

Dremov in The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina is 
certainly amusing when he tells in all seriousness how his 
family happened to receive its name: 


My grandfather, having showed a desire to serve his fatherland, 
was rewarded by a patent of nobility: and when they came to the 
tzar to ask what they should give him for a title the tzar deigned 
to go off into a slumber ...I1 am not to blame for that .. . and 
directed that they call him Dremov.*! 


This same Dremov often arouses from his meditation 
on, the vanity of human life with a keen observation that is 
almost a proverb. 

Pravdin in Fonvizin’s The Minor is a man of much the 
same type. Moralizer though he is, he belongs to the class 
of doers as well as talkers for his mission is to bring order 
out of chaos, to replace unrighteousness with justice. His 
moralistic utterances are such platitudes, however, and are 
delivered with such profound seriousness that they are al- 
most humorous. 

But the most famous moralizer of the entire Russian 
comedy of our period has a prominent part in this same 
play of Fonvizin. He is called Starodum, his name, how- 
ever, being in no sense synonymous with starovyer or old 
believer, a term applied to those who kept up old customs 
and superstitions. His name, rather, is meant to convey 
the impression that he believed in the virtues which had 
characterized the old Russia — truthfulness, integrity, and 
temperance. He was fond of young people, he wanted them 
to have a good time, but he believed it demoralizing to leave 
money to young people.*” He spoke frequently in parables 
and gave advice freely. Concerning marriage he counselled 
his niece: 


61 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, Il, 7. 
62 The Minor, III, 2. 


HUMOROUS TYPES SI 


Do not have love for your husband which would resemble friendship. 
Have for him friendship which would resemble love. That will be 
more durable. Then after twenty years of marriage you will find in 
your hearts the old attachment.** 


The sum of the philosophy of Starodum is contained in 
the one word virtue. 

The corrupt official as a type was present in the comedy 
throughout the whole period from Catherine to Gogol. The 
theme was not indigenous but was imported from the west, 
from such sources as the judges in the lawsuit of Alceste in 
Moliére’s Le Misanthrope or Brid’oison in Le Mariage de 
Figaro of Beaumarchais. On the other hand, it reached a 
popularity and an importance in Russia which it had never 
begun to have on the stages of western Europe. There was 
a very definite and well-marked growth of the type from 
Fonvizin to Gogol. In this development Catherine had 
no part. It would certainly have been poor policy for her 
to emphasize in her comedies the corruption of her serv- 
ants in official circles, for to have done this would have 
weakened the faith of the common people in their govern- 
ment. 

Even Fonvizin, who in The Brigadier had a representa- 
tive of this type, was careful to have the general background 
of his comedy one of respect for the central authority. This 
representative, the councillor, a clear-cut example of the 
corrupt official, was, furthermore, not in active service at 
the time of the play. In the words of his wife: 


My husband went into retirement in the year when the regulation 
against extortioning came out. He saw that there was nothing in the 
department for him to do.*4 


This little observation really turns the tables completely, 
for no matter what the councillor says later in the comedy 
about the righteousness of bribery, he can tell only ancient 
history. Because he has no present connection with the 
government his words are shorn of their danger. He is, 
nevertheless, an interesting type. Somehow without re- 
penting for his sins in the slightest, he has taken on a strong 


68 The Minor, IV, 2. 64 The Brigadier, I, 3. 


82 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


feeling for religion. In reply to the statement of Ivanushka 
that in France they love, change their minds, marry, and 
separate without the oversight of the Creator the councillor 
says: 

But that is in France and not with us true believers. No, dear 


son-in-law, both we and our wives are all in the hands of the Creator: 
with Him all the hairs of our head are numbered.® 


Yet this same man with evident satisfaction tells his idea 
of a court of justice in these words: 


I was a judge once myself: the guilty one, so it happened, would pay 
for his guilt, and the righteous one for his righteousness, and so in 
my time everyone was satisfied, the judge, the plaintiff, and the de- 
fendant.®® 


The councillor had one earnest conviction at least. Said 
he: 

I have always said that it is impossible to suppress bribetaking. 
How can you be expected to decide a case for nothing, merely for 


your salary alone? From the day of our birth we have never heard of 
such a thing! The thing is against human nature... .°7 


And of his faithful wife he declared: 


A wife, no matter what she is, if she only has a righteous hus- 
band, will never take it into her head to fall in love with another.®® 


The outstanding examples of the corrupt official are 
found in The Revizor. Since the chief, Anton Antonich, 
stands out from the satellites who cluster about him, a con- 
sideration of him will in a general way cover all the others. 
It is almost safe to say, in fact, that he is the best repre- 
sentative of this elusive and powerful personality in the 
whole Russian literature. In his Instructions for those 
who would like to play The Revizor as it should be, Gogol 
himself wrote: 


This personage is most of all occupied with getting all he can from 
others. From this occupation he found time to look out on life in a 
stricter manner or to observe better his own self. From this occupa- 
tion he grew vexed and oppressive and harsh without himself knowing 


65 The Brigadier, I, 1. 87 The Brigadier, Ill, 6. 
66 The Brigadier, Il, 1. 68 The Brigadier, IV, 7. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 83 


it because he was not accustomed to subdue an evil desire; he has only 
the passion to gather in all that his eyes can see. He simply forgot 
that this would be a burden to someone else and that from this some 
other back must be broken. He suddenly forgave the merchants who 
had plotted his ruin when they made an alluring proposal, because 
these attractive blessings of life besotted him and made him grow hard 
and insensible to the suffering of others. He is conscious of the fact 
that he is sinful; he even goes to church; he even thinks that he is 
rigid in his belief. He goes so far as to consider repenting some- 
time or other. But the great weakness of his life is that he takes 
bribes and his great consuming passion is to take all he can and not let 
go of anything.®? 


Like all others who live with a guilty conscience, Anton 
Antonich suffers acute anguish when he thinks he is to 
be found out, and he strides about madly crying ‘‘ Shame! 
Disgrace! ”, and other expressions of terror.” 

Anton Antonich is also religious, outwardly at least, and 
somewhat of a moralizer. He is so temperamental that 
in a moment he can change from bitter melancholy to the 
very pinnacle of gaiety. His vanity knows no bounds. 
With the same easy conception of his official obligations as 
the councillor of Fonvizin, he decides a case more in ac- 
cordance with his mood than with justice. All these char- 
acteristics are hinted at when he says to the warden that 
he should announce to the people: 


Formerly I fed you up to a moustache, but now I am going to 
nourish you into a full beard. Tell them all that, whoever comes with 
a request ... Cry it abroad to the whole nation, peal it forth with a 
bell, the devil take it. When there is a celebration let it be a 
celebration. 


But these sporting qualities in Anton Antonich do not 
obscure the fact that he was an extortioner just the same. 
It is very evident that he made everyone pay well for any- 
thing he gave them.” His avarice knew no bounds. 

The only remaining humorous type in the Russian comedy 
from Catherine to Gogol which is worthy of attention is 


89 Gogol, Polnoye Sobraniye Sochineniy, Slovo, 1921, pp. 237-238. 
70 The Revizor, I, 3. 

“1 The Revizor, V, 1. 

72 See The Revizor, V, to. 


84 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


that of the hard, grasping old woman, or samodursha, as 
she came later to be called. This type comes far closer 
than any of the previous ones to being a truly indigenous 
creation, although even here there is perhaps the hint of a 
slight connection with the mother-in-law of the western 
comedies. Such a parallel would be difficult to trace, how- 
ever, and is for all practical purposes non-existent. That 
the samodursha comes so close to the spirit of life in Rus- 
sia as to be thought of native origin, is proved by the fact 
that Ostrovsky, the great Russian playwright of the mid- 
nineteenth century, who went back to folklore and native 
customs for his inspiration, saw fit to make this type pre- 
dominant in a whole group of plays of which the most re- 
nowned is The Storm. From this angle the period under 
consideration, excessively imitative in so many particulars, 
actually did succeed in what to all intents and purposes 
amounts to the creation of a character which was destined 
after the passage of years to take a high place in native 
literature. 

Both of the more important comedies of Catherine con- 
tain personifications of this unpleasant class of woman. 
In O Time there are three old ladies who are of this type, 
Vyestnikova, Chudikhina, and Khanzhakhina herself. 
Since this latter dame is the most fully developed it will 
simplify matters to consider her as representing the others. 
Her own words will make clear her character. When she 
is busy with her prayers, there chances to enter her chamber 
a lad who wishes to marry. He asks her permission. Her 
own account of her reception of him follows: 

I called to him: “ Get out, don’t confuse me in praying, you ac- 


cursed one.” But he fell at my feet; and a second time I said 
to him: “ You devil, get out.” But he, not saying a word, thrust 


a paper into my hand and went away.... And he thought of 
getting married! O unthinkable and diabolical suggestion! ... He 
dared to ask my permission to marry! ... However I ordered 


him to be whipped and to take his marriage on his back: next time 
let him forget to prevent me from making my prostrations! 73 


The Madam Vorchalkina of Catherine, though not so 
formalistic as Khanzhakhina, is quite as avaricious. From 
73 O Time, I, 2. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 85 


the general context it is fairly clear that her basic reason 
for not wanting to marry off her daughters was her desire 
to postpone as long as possible the paying of the dowry. 
Then too she was jealous of the good fortune of others, a 
fact which is made plain by her disgust at the charity shown 
by the state to foundlings.“* More than this she is the very 
acme of conservatism. Her excuse for refusing to marry her 
younger daughter before her older is this: 

I myself was the fifth daughter of my mother, and I was com- 


pelled to wait until all of my older sisters were married; what can 
you do about it! Orderliness and seniority demand it.7® 


Madam Vorchalkina is not brilliant, for no one with 
half a mind would have given credence to Herkulov and 
Spesov when they declared that the government was going 
to issue an order that no marriages could take place for a 
period of ten years. 

A more pleasant side of both Khanzhakhina and Vor- 
chalkina is revealed at the end of the play when, over- 
coming their avarice for a moment, they give really large 
dowries to the girls. The impression persists that these 
old women might have had large hearts beneath their cold 
and inhospitable exteriors if they had not been so densely 
ignorant. 

Fonvizin presents a still more uninviting woman in the 
wife of the brigadier, or in Russian the brigadirsha. In 
her, avarice is developed to the n‘ degree. She thinks 
of nothing else than money, even making her love for her 
son secondary. She is educating this son, Ivanushka, not 
for cultural reasons, far from it, but to enable him to get 
ahead in the race for money. Education for its own sake 
is abhorrent to her. She says: 

Certainly grammar is not useful. Before you begin to learn it you 


must buy it. You pay eighty kopeks for it and whether you learn or 
not God knows.7é 


The brigadirsha, like Khanzhakhina, is devoted to the 
forms of religion. If she is not so extreme as the other 
nor quite so violent a hypocrite, she is none the less too 


74 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, II, 7. 
75 The Name-day of Madam Vorchalkina, II, 6. 7% The aie a 


86 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


anxious to appear religious. Her protestations of faith 
were too violent and accorded too little with her life prac- 
tice to be genuine. 

That the romantic element is entirely lacking in the 
nature of the brigadirsha is shown when the councillor, 
with the intention of making love to her, says:: 


May I request .. . 


She interrupts him quickly with the words: 


And what do you want to request of me? If only, my dear sir, 
it is not money then I can advance you something; you know how 
money is to-day, nobody loans it for nothing, and for the sake of it 
they don’t stop at anything.*? 


Madam Prostakov in The Minor of Fonvizin is made 
of the same material, except that she is even more than the 
brigadirsha bound up in her foolish son. In spite of her 
stinginess she hires three tutors for him and then enjoys 
telling how much they cost her, although she pays them only 
the merest pittance. She reckons learning on a dollars-and- 
cents basis and is, therefore, always on the anxious seat 
for fear she is not getting her money’s worth from the 
teachers. 

Madam Prostakov is also rough in a physical sense as 
is seen in her hairpulling struggle with her brother. She 
is cruel and exacting with her servants, but she is utterly 
lacking in courage when at the end she is punished for her 
sins. 

Thus the two outstanding traits of this type are, avarice 
on a basis of excessive and unreasoning conservatism, and 
superstitution. Around these two poles cluster all the 
emotions of their lives. 

To sum up the general characteristics which marked the 
humorous types of the Russian comedy from Catherine to 
Gogol, mention should first be made of the gallophile as 
being more clearly than any other a borrowing from the 
west. He is found rather obviously in the early comedies 
of the period especially in Fonvizin; Gogol and Griboyedov, 


77 The Brigadier, Il, 3. 


HUMOROUS TYPES 87 


on the other hand, used the general theme as an under- 
current without representing it in one outstanding character. 

The so-called savant is best represented by the Nekopey- — 
kov of Catherine. Although he too is based on western 
conceptions, he finds his prototype not in the keen prac- 
ticality of a Figaro nor in the optimistic philosophy of a 
Dr. Pangloss, but in the pedantic book learning of a 
Pancrace. 

The confidant is seen in the person of Nepustov. He is 
one of the least interesting characters, for, as in the French 
models, although he arranges everything for his friend he 
is otherwise a rather colorless individual. 

The rogue, coming from the original Spanish picaroon 
through the medium of the various western literatures, is 
to be found even in the work of Catherine. Here he is 
simply a high class rascal far removed from the gracious 
sinner of the Spanish original. The only rogue in the 
whole comedy of the period with a vestige of the charm 
of the Spanish is Khlestakov, the master bluffer in The 
Revizor. 

The type of ingenuous heroine also came from the west. 
The best example of this type is found in Sofia, heroine of 
The Misfortune of Being Clever. Utterly unsophisticated 
as she is, Sofia is fitted to live in no age but an age of 
sentimentalism. 

The character of the pert maid is quite well developed. 
She is seen in at least two clear-cut examples, Paraskovya 
and Liza. Her outstanding characteristic is her pertness; 
but in addition she is a sensible person, warm-hearted and 
full of good advice. Her depth of intellect, however, is not 
great. 

The lover is not a strong type in this period. With the 
exception of Khlestakov, who can hardly be called a lover 
because he lacked sincerity, there is not one satisfactory 
representative of this type in the entire comedy we have 
considered. . 

The blundering manservant is best seen in the person 
of Osip in The Revizor. He, like Antip, is a creature of no 
great intelligence but canny in true peasant fashion and 


88 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


really devoted to his master however much he may criticise 
him. He is awkward and heavy and fond of the pleasures 
of the flesh. 

Two dissimilar examples of the boastful officer stand out 
clearly. Colonel Skalozub is the type of boastful officer 
who enjoys dressing up in a fine uniform and regaling the 
ladies with tales of his exploits. The brigadier on the 
other hand takes greater delight in the discipline and hard- 
ships of actual military life. So saturated is he with the 
idea of the importance of rank in the army that he even 
speculates about rank after death. He is a rougher, cruder 
type than Colonel Skalozub. 

Of the moralizers Dremov, in spite of his contradictory 
name, is accustomed to recite platitudes in no sleepy fash- 
ion. Pravdin, a similar figure, administers the duties of 
his office in so upright a manner that his moralizing is 
actually carried into effect. Starodum, theorizer that he is, 
occasionally illustrates his point in a virile way. He more 
than the rest was a real child of the author, as Poor Richard 
was of Franklin. The human side of Starodum is evinced 
by his interest in children and young people. 

Although the corrupt official as a type was not an in- 
digenous growth in Russia, it reached a higher degree of 
development there than in the west. For obvious reasons 
Catherine did not have a representative; Fonvizin created 
the councillor, a rather despicable person who was forced 
to retire because of his evil deeds; but it is Anton Antonich 
in The Revizor who stands at the head of the list. Ex- 
tremely impulsive, he could be arrogant at one time and 
conscience-stricken at another. His outstanding trait, 
however, is avarice. 

The type of hard, grasping old woman is practically in- 
digenous. The representatives from the comedy of Cath- 
erine are avaricious, formalistic, and conservative. Knowl- 
edge appears to be their greatest need, a need, however, 
which they themselves would be the first to deny. The brig- 
adirsha hates culture in any form, her one grace being her 
love for her son. She too is ruled by pride and avarice, 
as indeed are all the other members of this important group. 


CHAPTER VII 
CONCLUSION 


Since the first task which confronts one who would study 
the humor in the comedies of the period from Catherine 
to Gogol is of necessity that of limiting his study within 
reasonable bounds, we have judged it wise to pass over with 
a mere cursory glance the host of comedies produced during 
the period by the minor playwrights such as Sumarokov, 
Lukin, and Kapnist, and to investigate intensively only 
those comedies which in the judgment of posterity have 
been a faithful interpretation of Russian humor. This 
method has led to the analysis of the chief comedies of 
Fonvizin, Griboyedov, and Gogol, and to a lesser degree 
those of the Empress Catherine. The comedies of Cather- 
ine are worth little artistically in themselves. They have 
been included in our study, however, rather because they 
were of value in inspiring other and greater artists to pur- 
sue the art of comedy-writing. From the purely humorous 
point of view, moreover, these comedies are not to be 
disregarded. 

One of the most interesting ramifications into which this 
study leads one is the consideration of those western in- 
fluences which have left their mark upon the comedy of 
this period. Though fearing the charge of irrelevancy, we 
have included a short chapter on western influences. The 
French influence, with the tradition of Moliére dominant, is 
seen in every author from Catherine to Gogol. In Fon- 
vizin the French authors, inferior ones many of them, were 
appropriated almost bodily; while in Griboyedov is felt 
rather than seen the subtle influence of Sheridan, Shake- 
spere, and Moliére. For the Russian spirit was gradually 
breaking through the veneer of foreign affectation, and with 
The Revizor of Gogol we find a real Russian tradition in the 
drama. In the realm of comedy, then, this period did lay 
the foundation for the splendid edifice of modern Russian 
literature. 


go THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


The consideration of humor proper as found in the 
comedies of Catherine, Fonvizin, Griboyedov, and Gogol, 
we have approached from two different angles, the first 
impersonal, the second personal. From the former angle 
the material was divided into three groups according to the 
particular form of humor, whether presented in the guise ~ 
of jokes, or that of humorous situations, or finally, that of 
humorous dialogue. From the latter, the personal angle, 
the various humorous types were studied. 

Of all the guises in which the playwright clothes the 
humor in his comedy, probably the lowest and least ef- 
fective is the joke. Since, therefore, in the stretch of 
time under consideration, we find jokes interpolated with 
decreasing frequency, one indication is at hand to show 
that the humor in the Russian comedy was steadily advanc- 
ing toward a more artistic plane. As to humorous situa- 
tions, the rough scenes of Catherine, the more perfectly 
formed if not more original episodes of Fonvizin, the more 
varied technique of Griboyedov, and finally the more ex- 
clusively Russian effects of Gogol, warmed and colored as 
they were by the Little Russian influence, — all these go 
to prove that, the successive dramatists were becoming more 
familiar with the machinery of their craft as well as with 
the Russian psychology. As the period wore along, as 
jokes were discarded, and as the humorous situation de- 
veloped, the more complex mechanism of the dialogue came 
to be brought to bear with greater skill than formerly, for 
the possibilities in the way of depicting clashing interests 
afforded by this type of expression came to be realized more 
and more. This more involved form of humor, then, which 
the later artists employed increasingly to replace the joke, 
marks a step in the development of the Russian comedy. 
And thus it happened that the rarity of jokes in Gogol, 
his sympathetic appreciation of the value of the humorous 
situation, and the expanded employment of a more per- 
fectly formed humorous dialogue, all tended to prove that 
there had been a definite evolution in humor through an 
impersonal medium, hand in hand with that improvement 
in every line which is characteristic of genuine literary 
evolution. 


CONCLUSION : QI 


The personal method of approach to the available ma- 
terial involved a study of the humorous types found in the 
comedies from Catherine to Gogol. In considering these it 
seemed advisable for the sake of convenience to divide 
the main characters of the more important comedies of the 
period into thirteen classes. Of these the first eleven, in- 
cluding the gallophile, the so-called savant, the confidant, 
the rogue, the ingenuous heroine, the pert maid, the lover, 
the blundering manservant, the clown, the moralizer, and 
the boastful officer, all these are to a greater or less degree 
borrowings from the west. This does not mean that they 
are all of them inferior to the same types as they appear 
in the western drama. Some of them, for example the 
blundering manservant in The Revizor, are works of art, 
equal to the best that the theatre of the west had to offer 
at that time. At all events, when one remembers that so 
much of this work had to be explored to discover what the 
field had to offer before intensely original dramas could 
be produced, the unbiased critic will appreciate the efforts 
of the Russian dramatists to enrich their work with ideas 
from abroad. And certainly the twelfth type, the corrupt 
official, although borrowed in a crude state from abroad, 
attained to a perfection of development with Gogol which 
was unparalleled. The fact, however, that twelve out of 
thirteen types can easily be recognized in the western litera- 
ture of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, proves 
that the commonly prevalent opinion that the period was 
predominantly imitative cannot be disputed, even after the 
most sympathetic study of the comedies themselves. 

Though it must be admitted that the whole basis of humor 
in the comedy was imitative, with now and then an im- 
provement over the originals, the fact remains, neverthe- 
less, that the last type is to all intents and purposes original 
and indigenous. The hard, grasping old woman of the 
time of Catherine is surely of native growth and origin. 
Brought to some degree of perfection in the period under 


sora Semanal 


consideration, the subject..was in readiness for. the magic 
this study, for Ostrovsky, the. orentest playwright” Russia 
has yet produced. The consummation was the bitter irony 


Q2 THE HUMOR IN THE RUSSIAN COMEDY 


of the samodursha. Thus it is clear that if the Russian 
comedy from Catherine to Gogol had cherished only this 
one character its existence would have been justified. As 
a matter of fact it did far more, for in adapting as well 
as adopting some of the best of western types, it paved the 
way for a better day for Russian humor. 


BIBLIOGRAPHY 


I. EpIrIons 


CATHERINE: Sochineniya Ekateriny II, Red. Pypina, izd. imper. 
akademii nauk, S-P, 1oor. 

CATHERINE: Sochineniya Imperatritzy Ekateriny II, pod redaktziey 
Ars. I Vvedenskago, S-P, 1893. 

Fonvizin: Sochineniya, red. Vvedenskago, izd. Marksa, S-P, 1893. 

GRIBOYEDOV: Gore ot Uma, red. E. A. Lyatzkago, Stockholm, 1920. 

Gripovepov: The Misfortune of Being Clever, tr. by S. W. Pring, 
David Nutt, London, 1914. (This edition formed the basis for 
the extracts from this dramatist in Chapters III, IV, and V.) 

GocoLt: Sochineniya, tip. samoobrazovaniye, S-P (no date). 

Gocot: Polnoye Sobraniye Sochineniy, Slovo, 1921. 


II. GENERAL WorKS 


Von Bere, E. P.: Russkaya Komediya do Poyavleniya Ostrovskago, 
Ottisk iz Russ. Phil. Vyestnika, Tipographiya Varshavskago 
Uchebnago Okruga, Varshava, 1912. (This is the best work 
dealing with the comedy in general up to the time of Ostrovsky.) 

CoRVIN, PIERRE DE (Pierre Nevsky): Le Thédire en Russie depuis 
ses Origines jusqu’a nos Jours, Paris, 1890. 

Jact¢, V.: Ruska Knijizevnost u Osamnaestom Stoliezu, Zagreb, 1895. 

KropotKin: Jdeals and Realities in Russian Literature, Alfred A. 
Knopf, New York, roto. 

MAcHAL, JAN: Slovanské Literatury, dil I, Prague, 1922. 

OvsyYANIKO-KuLikovsky: Istoriya Russkoy Literatury XIV Vyeka, 
Moskva, 1908-1012. 

PATOUILLET, J.: Le Thédtre des Moeurs Russes des Origines a 
Ostrovsky, Paris, 1912. 

PATOUILLET, J.: L’histoire du Thédtre Russe: Essai de Bibliographie 
Critique, in Le Revue des Etudes Slaves, tome II, fasc. 3-4, p. 
Lay: 

Potevoy, P.: Jstoriya Russkoy Literatury, S-P, 1874. 

PorrFiriv: ZJstoriya Russkoy Slovesnosti, Kazan, 1910. 

Pypin, A. N.: IJstoriya Russkoy Literatury, S-P, 1917. 

SAVODNIK, V.: Kratkiy Kurs Istorii Russkoy Slovesnosti, I izd., 
Kolomea. 

SxaBicHEvsky, A. M.: Istoriya Noveyshey Russkoy Literatury, S-P, 
1900. 

VaRNEKE, B. V.: Jstoriya Russkago Teatra, Kazan, 1908 i I9Io. 


Q4 BIBLIOGRAPHY 


III. SpectAL Works 


Bercson, Henri: Laughter, tr. by Brereton and Rothwell, The Mac- 
millan Co., New York, 1912. 

ButicH, N. N.: Ocherki po Istoriy Russkoy Literatury Prosvyesh- 
chentya ot Nachala XIX Vyeka, S-P, 1912. 


, CHANDLER, FRANK W.: Romances of Roguery, The Macmillan Co., 


\ 


for Columbia Univ. Press, New York, 1890. 

DoproLtyuBov, N. A.: Pervoye Polnoye Sobraniye Sochinenty, red. 
Lemke, S-P, 1912. 

GRESSET: Oeuvres, Londres, MDCCLXV. 

Kantemir, A. D.: Sochineniya, Pisma, i Izbranniye Perevody, red. 
Ephremovy, S-P, 1867-1868. 

Kapnist, V. V.: Jzbranniya Sochineniya; izd. Glazunov, Klassnaya 
Bibi, vyp.) 35,' 5-P, 19007. 

KirPICHNIKOV, A.: Ocherki po Istoriti Novoy Russkoy Literatury, 
S-P, 18096. 

KoTLyAREvsky, N.: Gogol (1829-1842), Petrograd, 1915. 

LEBEDEV, B.: Shekspir v Peredyelkakh Ekateriny II, Russky Vyestnik, 
T3579, )210.''3; ; 

LESSING, GOTTHOLD EPHRAIM: Minna von Barnhelm, Intro. and notes 
by W. D. Whitney, New York, 1800. 


- MatTHEws, BRANDER: Moliére, his Life and Works, New York, toto. 


Mo.iERE: Oeuvres, Bibliotheque Hachette, Paris (no date). 
Poxrovsky, V. I.: Denis Ivanovich Fonvizin, Ego Zhizn i Sochinentya, 
Moskva, Iott. , 
Poxrovsky, V.I.: Nikolay Vasilyevich Gogol, ego Zhizn i Sochinentya, 
3° izd., Moskva, 1gro. 

SumMAROKov, A. P.: Ezhegodmk Imperatorskikh Teatrov, S-P, 1898- 
1899, 8°, p. 16. 

SHERIDAN, R. B.: Sheridan’s Comedies, ed. of Brander Matthews, 
Boston, 1885. 

TIMOFEYEV, SERGEY: Vliyaniye Shekspira na Russkuyu Dramu, 
Moskva, 1887. 

VESELOVSKY, ALEXEY: Zapadnoye Vliyaniye v Novoy Russkoy Litera- 
turye, Moskva, 1896. 

WIELAND, CHRISTOPH MARTIN: Gesammelte Werke, Weimar, 1776. 

ZAMOTIN, I. I.: Romantizm Dvatzatych Godov XIX Stol. Russkoy 
Literatury, Varshava, 1903. 


VITA 


This is to certify that I, Arthur Prudden Coleman, son of 
Carrie Davis and Michael Lyon Coleman, was born on 
Wildcat, Seymour, Connecticut, July 19, 1897. I received 
my elementary education in the public schools of Oxford, 
Seymour, and Southington, all of Connecticut. In Septem- 
ber, 1912, I entered the Cheshire School, Cheshire, Con- 
necticut, and was graduated therefrom in June, 1914. In 
September, 1915, I matriculated at Wesleyan University, 
Middletown, Connecticut, and completed the academic 
course in June, 1920, with honors in general scholarship and 
special honors in Romance Languages. From April 6 to 
December 21, 1918, I served as a second-class seaman in 
the United States Naval Reserve Force. In the academic 
year 1920-21 I studied modern languages at Yale Univer- 
sity. In 1921-22 I was a University Scholar in Slavonic 
languages in Columbia University, from which institution 
I received the degree of Master of Arts in 1922. I was again 
a University Scholar in Columbia in 1922-23. The year 
1923-24 was spent in Europe as a Czechoslovak Gov- 
ernment Scholar in the Slavonic languages and literatures 
at the Charles University in Prague. 


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